The Viceroy’s State elephants were all kept at Barrackpore, and the elephant-lines had a great attraction for children, especially for a small great-nephew of mine, now a Lieut.-Colonel, and the father of a family, then aged six.  The child was very fearless, but the only elephant he was allowed to approach was a venerable tusker named “Warren Hastings,” the very identical elephant on which Warren Hastings made his first entry into Calcutta.  “Warren” was supposed to be nearly 200 years old, and his temper could be absolutely relied on.  It is curious that natives, in speaking of a quiet, good-tempered animal, always speak of him as “poor” (gharib).  The little boy was perpetually feeding Warren Hastings with oranges and bananas, and the two became great friends.  It was a pretty sight seeing the fearless small boy in his white suit, bare legs, and little sun-helmet, standing in front of the great beast who could have crushed him to a wafer in one second, and ordering him in the vernacular, with his shrill child’s voice, to kneel.  It was a more curious sight seeing the huge animal at once obey his little mentor, and, struggling with the infirmities and rheumatic joints of old age (to which, alas! others besides elephants are subject), lower himself painfully on to his knees.  “Salaam karo” ("Salute me"), piped the white child, and the great pachyderm instantly obeyed, lifting his trunk high in salute; which, if you think it out, may have a certain symbolism about it.

It was the same small boy who on returning to England at the age of seven, after five years in India, looked out of the windows of the carriage with immense interest, as they drove through London from Charing Cross station.  “Mother,” he piped at length, “this is a very odd country!  All the natives seem to be white here.”

My little great-nephew was immensely petted by the native servants, and as he could speak the vernacular with greater ease than English, he picked up from the servants the most appalling language, which he innocently repeated, entailing his frequent chastisement.

I can sympathise with the child there, for at the age of nine, in Dublin, I became seized with an intense but short-lived desire to enlist as a trumpeter in a Lancer regiment.  Seeing one day a real live, if diminutive, Lancer trumpeter listening to the band playing in the Castle yard, I ran down and consulted him as to the best means of attaining my desire.  The small trumpeter was not particularly intelligent, and was unable to help me.  Though of tender years, he was regrettably lacking in refinement, for his conversation consisted chiefly of an endless repetition of three or four words, not one of which I had ever heard before.  Carefully treasuring these up, as having a fine martial smack about them suitable to the military career I then proposed embracing, I, in all innocence, fired off one of the trumpeter’s full-flavoured expressions at my horror-stricken family during luncheon, to be at once ordered out of the room, and severely punished afterwards.  We all know that “what the soldier said” is not legal evidence; in this painful fashion I also learnt that “what the trumpeter said” is not held to be a valid excuse for the use of bad language by a small boy.