English, after the rickety fashion of a Madrassee, Sam spoke fairly enough; he also read and wrote the language, the latter accomplishment phonetically, but yet sufficiently near to the rules of orthography to make you fully understand and pay for ‘tirty seers wrice’ as thirty seers (measures) of rice. What if he did elect to spell rice with a _w_? Is it not recorded that an eminent member of a large mercantile firm, in days long gone by, invariably included an _h_ in the word sugar? And is it not also chronicled how he chastised almost to the death his son and heir for omitting that letter when invoicing a cargo of best Jamaica moist? If then Blank Blank, Esq. of the city of London opined that sugar required an _h_, why not the same liberty as regards the _w_ to Mootoosammy of the city of Madras?
A sad waverer in religious opinions Master Sam, I fear. A very Pharisee of a Hindu, a rigid stickler for the worship of Vishnu or Siva on the high-days and holidays of those deities, when his forehead and arms would be spotted and streaked with coloured ashes, his garments would smell of saffron and sandal-wood, his English diminutive name would be put aside for its more lengthy and sonorous native patronymic, and he would be off to the temple to make _poojah_ (prayer) to his _swamis_ (gods). But yet, somehow or other, all these symptoms and signs of Hinduism would disappear at Christmas, Easter, or Whitsuntide. At those seasons of the Christian year, Sam was no longer Mootoosammy, but Sam pure and simple. No more the believer he in the Vedahs and Shastras, but a pinner of faith on Aves and Credos; no _poojah_ for him now in the temple, but crossings and genuflections in the little chapel of the station. Not a trace in these days of idolatrous scents clinging to cloths and turban, or of ‘caste’ marks disfiguring brow or limb. Dole in hand—obtained either from pickings at master’s ’counts or from bazaar-man’s _dustoor_ (custom)—he is off to join Father Chasuble’s small flock, and to bow down and formalise with the best or worst of that good priest’s congregation. I really think and believe, that to secure a holiday and an ‘outing,’ Sam would have professed himself a Mohammedan during the Ramadan, a Hebrew during the Passover, a Heathen Chinee during the feast of Lanterns, and a Buddhist during the Perihara or other high-jinks of the yellow-robed priests of Gautama Buddha.