Narrative of the Life and Travels of Serjeant B—— — John Shaqi
Narrative of the Life and Travels of Serjeant B——Butler, Robert
History
Narrative of the Life and Travels of Serjeant B——
Butler, Robert
Butler, Robert, 1784- -- Travel -- India; India -- Description and travel
I was remarkably well situated in her service, partly through a very
trifling circumstance, which was this: When out one day airing, she
dropped her gold watch and some money, and I found them and gave them
to her in a very cheerful manner, being happy to have it in my power
to relieve her uneasy mind; and she took a liking to me, as she said,
for my apparent honesty and attention. The first strong proof I had of
her attachment was as follows: The housekeeper desired me to bring her
a bottle of small beer, and it being somehow not to her mind, she
abused me so as to make me cry plentifully; and before I could get
myself properly composed, the bell rang, and I was obliged to go up
stairs, and, notwithstanding my care not to be discovered, my mistress
perceived me in rather a confused state of mind, and asked me the
reason in a very kind manner. I was afraid to tell a lie, and her kind
treatment emboldened me to acknowledge the truth. After due inquiry,
finding the housekeeper in the wrong, and me in the right, she ordered
her to get ready to leave the house, but with wages and board wages
till the term. Her regard to me still increased, and I did all in my
power to please her. In a few weeks after, she sent for my mother, and
told her she intended to make a man of me, if we both lived, meaning
to give me an education for a genteel business, and to put me in a way
to do for myself. My parents were highly gratified with these
proposals. But, alas! how uncertain are all human plans and prospects;
"For who saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it
not?" The great leveller, who pours contempt upon princes, laid my
kind benefactor, "with the hopes of the father that begat me, and of
the mother who bare me, low in the dust;" and shall I say, in
bitterness of soul, as Jacob did in another case, "that all these
things are against me?" Very far be this expression from me; but I
have no cause to doubt that, if Mrs. C. had thought herself so near
leaving our world, she would have made some provision for me; for the
day on which she died, perceiving the approach of the last enemy, she
ordered the servant girl who was in the room to ring the bell for me;
but her sister-in-law, understanding this, came out of the bed-room,
and prevented me entering, saying, I was not wanted, and, as the girl
afterwards told me, said to Mrs. C that I was not in the house. Mrs.
C.'s brother-in-law got nearly all her money, houses, and moveables,
and only gave me sixpence when I carried his portmanteau to the coach
on his leaving Edinburgh. But I was not the only one that sustained a
loss by her death; for many poor creatures, who had been her weekly
pensioners, mourned their respective losses also. It was really
mournful to see these, and her trades-people, and others who had been
benefited by her, on the day she was interred, many of them with
drooping heads and watery eyes, taking a view of the last remains of
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