United States or Mauritania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The fourth decade of the deceased century dawned on a procession of Oriental pilgrims, variously qualified or disqualified to hold the gorgeous East in fee, who, with bakshish in their purses, a theory in their brains, an unfilled diary-book in their portmanteaus, sought out the Holy Land, the Sinai peninsula, the valley of the Nile, sometimes even Armenia and the Monte Santo, and returned home to emit their illustrated and mapped octavos.
In the morning they came, sure enough, and first asked for a dollar 'to buy coffee, but my husband said 'No; he would give bakshish if he found writing, but if he found no writing he would give nothing, and in any case, nothing till we returned. As we heard no more of them after they had retired to think over it, we were sure there could be no inscription.
We used to reach it in a boat, and get hold of Tonina, the old woman who provided us with the camerino, or little stall to undress in, and who would grin from ear to ear at our chaff and the thought of her bakshish. The women's costumes were short trousers, with bodice or belt of blue serge or white alpaca trimmed with red.
Resistance to it was so surely to be counted on that such a summons was often kept in the background more as a threat than anything else. Now and then petty chiefs in Palestine and Syria withheld their bushels of corn, their three oxen or their twenty sheep; or perhaps they were so sparing of bakshìsh that the tribute itself was swallowed up and vanished entirely from the accounts.
Coolness wasn't the special feature of his trade before." Nabendu in trying to reconcile the story of his purchase with his visit to the Magistrate, uttered some incoherent words, which nobody could make sense of. Nilratan spoke to the peons: "There has been no occasion for bakshish; you shan't have it."
At Alexandria his first greeting was a cry for bakshish. Within half an hour after landing, most of his childhood's illusions were dispelled. A drenching rain fell. The delta of the Nile had been turned into one vast cotton field which looked like a mass of snow. The clover was in bloom along the railway to Cairo.
"You were a fool, Bulger," said Desmond testily. "This may lead to no end of trouble." Bulger looked penitent, and wrathful, and overwhelmed. "We must try to hurry," added Desmond to Surendra Nath. "Promise the men more bakshish: don't stint." For two hours longer they pushed on with all the speed of which the jaded beasts were capable.
"You have been unwittingly made the instrument of a forgery," he added, "and we want your help towards detecting it." The boy plucked up courage and answered every question put him quite candidly. His tale corroborated Rámtonu's in most particulars, with the addition that the tall babu had given him eight annas bakshish for cashing the cheque.
I gave him all the money in my possession, Rs. 9-8-5 nine rupees eight annas and five pie for I always keep small change as bakshish when I am in camp. Gunga Dass clutched the coins, and hid them at once in his ragged loin-cloth, his expression changing to something diabolical as he looked round to assure himself that no one had observed us. "Now I will give you something to eat," said he.
"I can place at your disposal," he went on, "some hundred energetic fellahs who, under the spur of whip and bakshîsh, would dig with their finger-nails to the very centre of the earth. We may try, if it pleases your lordship, to clear away a buried sphinx or a shrine, or to open up a hypogeum."
Word Of The Day