A FUNNY BOOK,

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 8221, 26 November 1888, Page 3

A FUNNY BOOK,

(BY OUR HASTINGS CORRESPONDENT.) I have received from nn Auglo-Vmlian friend a little work which has amused me so much that I skim off the cream of it for tho benefit of my renders. The book is a 41 Memoir of OnooeoolChunder Mookeijee, by his nephew Mohindronauth Mooker-

jee." Let me, in fairness to the first of these long-named gentlemen, state that there was nothing in his career deserving to be wade tun of. And to be equally fair to his biograper, I should state that nothing was further from his thoughts than to be funny. And this uneonseiousnes" of " the huiiinr of'ic ;: iriereaf-es the enjoyment with which wo read the strange jumble of pathos and batliosj magniloquence and slang, in which the biographer shows that he at least possesses one requisite of a "telling" writer— the art of contrast. Perhaps the excerpts which I give mny be useful to those meritorious but unfortunate litcratcurs who seek to make np for lack of originality in their ideas by novelty of expression. Before quoting from the memoir itself, however, let mo briefly introduce it here

to my readers. The late Honorable Justice Onoocool Chumler Mookerjee " was born of a respectable family of Coolin Brahruius of the iirst class," ami after having proved himself to be a laborious student at college, and a {rood sofl by supporting his widowed mother, worked his way up till he became a firstrate native pleader in the Madras Courts, am! at. last was made a Judge. ("aud a good Judge too") in the High Court. Exemplary in every relation of life — a

man ot strict integrity ami of groat benevolence — he deserved the nil miration

with which he was regarded by his nephew, who himself appears to be o well-read man and a thoroughly good fellow, and who begins his labor of love as follows : — " Let me hold my Penna after a few months to write the memoir of the individual above named, but quidagis? If anyone put to me such a query I will be utterly thrown into a great jeopardy and linrley-btirley, and say — 'a fool of myself.' As a spider spins its web for its own destruction, or as when the clown who was busy digging a grave for Ophelia was asked by Hamlet " Wliost; grave 8 this, sirrah ?' said ' Aline, sir,' so in writing one's memoir I am as if to dig my own grave in it." He thus describes thu progress made by the young Onoocoo) in his fttudies : " Within a couple of days the young learner mastered the Persian alphabet from alif to ya, and within n couple of days more performed the feat — difficult enough for an infant of live or six — of tracing with accuracy the characters which compose that alphabet." Think of that, ye school boards' schoolmasters and callow pupils ! The promising lad rose, as we have seen, to be a successful

pleader, but, like other mortals, had his share of trouble. By the dea»h- of his brother, Onoocool ' ' was once again thrown into the peok of troubles." He was also attacked by " a doliferous boil," and afterwards by fever, but having changed his place of resilience "felt himself much emendatory in his health." (Newspapers please copy, and never again be so vulgar as to say that a sick person "got better.") His appointment to a seat in the Legislative Council of Bengal is thus commented upon : — " This was the first time that we see a pleader of the High Court taking a seat in the Bengal Legislative Council, solely by dint of his own legal weapon, and he was an au fail and therefore a transcendenta lucre to tlic Council. ... It was all along the case to give scats in the Council to nonprofessional men (who are or were as if cocks of the roost, or in other words natives of high social status). But the selection in Justice Mookerjee was ?nost judicious and Up-top." On the 7th December, 1879, Onoocool took his seat on the bench of the High Court, with Justice Jackson. " This wus a desideratum to him. The

hope which be so long hatched at last yielded to him what he hankered after and in icvcn-lcagucd bools." " True hope is swift, and ilies with swallow's -wines," and he might justly have said " Vein, vidi, vici!" "The law study to which he had devoted so loug his midnight hours with indefatigable ardor and the zeal of a martyr yielded him fruits most saccha-

rifcrous and wihliedfor, position, respect, and wealth." This is how he pleaded : — " He made no gairish of words, never made his sentences long when he could express his thoughts in small ones. He never made his sentences periphrastic when he could do in any easy way." Oh ingenuous Mohindronauth ! Hadst thou emulated thy worthy uncle and abjured "gairish of words" and "sentences periphrastic," then had their readers been •robbed of much delectable cacliination, und this paper had never been written ! When he adds that " In defeating or conducting acaseOnoocool's temper was never incalcsccnt and hazy" it is small wonder that the great pleader's "elevation created a catholic ravishment throughout the domina under the benign and fostering 6ceptreof^reat^/6('««." {sic.) "He wasa faithful Hindoo, but let it not bo understood that he was orthodox to that pitch as there are many Brahmins now, who, after having perpetrated heaps of the lowest dregs of vice, would go and bathe once in the Gauge.", and then nurture the thought that they were saint-like, and thus, having a faith in that stream as oue having power to abstcrse one's heart from

sin, they will no on committing sin till they ]>op off or till their doomsday." Would you like to know what manner of man ynoocool was? Well — "When a boy he wa« filamentous, but in course of time he became plump as a partridge. He was neither a Brobdignagiau not a Lilliputian, but a man of mediocre size, fair- complexion, well-shaped nose, hazel eyes, and ears well proportioned to the face." Note this last, which doubtless accounted for his

wisdom, length of ears having since Swift's "Tale of a Tub," — and perhaps a few years betpre— been held to denote shortness of wit. " His dress was unaffeoted. Even on going to see a Nauteh I have never seen him in a dress as fine as a carrot fresh scraped but esto perpetuum in pantaloon, and in satin or broadcloth chapran with r. toopee well quadrate to the dress. But for the last two or three years he was constrained tovcar his natural dkootee even when at home for pantaloon, and this is ascribable, simply to the fattening of his belly, to which, and_ to guard against father corpulency on being advised by his doctor." Justice Mookerjee dcpated this life on the 17th August, 1871. " After court he felt a slight headache, which gradually aggravated and became so uncontrollable that he fell like a toad under a harrow. He remained nolto voce for a few hours, and then went to God about 6 p.m. The house presented a second Babel, or a pretty Mile oj

The death of his uncle suggests a train of thous-ht into which Mohindronauth seems to have got without a return ticket, his reflections being so profound that I fear that .not even the philosophers of "the tent " would understand them. He winds up, however, with an axiom which I hope no one, even in this sceptical age, will deny— "lt is an indubitable fact' that a man cannot be restored to his living state after he ceases to be. 1 ' I quit my subject with the 1 earnest hope that the reader will ponder thin solemn fact and "not cease to be" sooner than he can help it.