MY CHRISTMAS AT THE AJAIBGAUM EXHIBITION
In Two Chapters
CHAPTER I.
I WAS a proud man when my respected chief, the Editor of the Presidency Oracle, by way of giving me a Christmas holiday, arranged to send me down to represent the paper at the Ajaibgaum Exhibition. These tournaments of peace were new in India; but Sir Rupert Boldick, who then drove the South-West Provinces administration at high pressure speed, did not need the help of an Australian speculator to show him how to manage them. Though one of the first, it was perhaps the most successful of Indian Exhibitions; and I started with a determination to do justice to it in print. My worthy chief did not neglect to furnish me with letters of introduction and much sage counsel as to my conduct on my first Mofussil trip. In a strain of fatherly exhortation, which reminded me of the advice of the estimable Polonius to the hot-blooded Laertes in Hamlet, he recommended a gravity of demeanour suitable to one on whose card was graven this legend:
Mr. Mudsworth
"In general society, my dear boy, mention the paper and your connection with it as little as possible; but let every official know who you are, and don't hesitate to ask for anything you want. Restrain your passion for talk and try to listen a little. Your old fashioned phiz may, with judicious silence, secure you the esteem of the good people at Ajaibgaum, who will have plenty to tell you. So don't try to instruct them, but let them instruct you. You look so precious wise in those gold spectacles out that, if you display a little tact, nobody need find out that you
