The Sahib baba-logue have a lively share in several of the native festivals. The Hoolee, for instance, is their high carnival of fun, when they pelt their elders and each other with the red powder of the _mhindee_, and repel laughing assaults with smart charges of rose-water fired from busy little squirts. During the illumination of the Duwallee, they receive from the servants presents of fantastic toys, and search in the compounds by moonlight for the flower of the tree that never blossoms, and for the soul of a snake, whence comes to the finder good luck for the rest of his life. These are the traditional sports of the baba-logue; but they are ingenious in inventing others, wherein, from time to time, the imitative faculty, of the native child especially, is tragically manifested. When the Nawab, Shumsh-ud-deen, was hung at Delhi for hiring a _sowar_ to assassinate Mr. Fraser, the British Commissioner, the country population round about were seized with the news as with the coming of a dragon or a destroying army; and the British Lion was the Bogy, the Black Douglas, in whose name poor _ryots'_ wives scared refractory brats into trembling obedience. Not far from Delhi was a village school, where were many small boys,--so many Asiatic frogs-in-a-well,--to whom "the news of the day" was full of terrible portent. Once, when they were tired of foot-ball, and the shuttlecock had grown heavy on their hands, the cry was, "What shall we play next?" And one daring little fellow--whose father had been to Delhi with his rent, and had told how the Nawab met his _kismut_ (his fate) so quietly, that the gold-embroidered slippers did not fall from his feet--cried, "Let us play hanging the Nawab! and I will be the Nawab; and Kama, here, shall be Kurreim Khan, the sowar; and Joota shall be Metcalfe Sahib, the magistrate; and the rest of you shall be the sahibs, and the sepoys, and the priests." _Acha, acha!_--"Good, good!" they all cried. "Let us play the Nawab's kismut! let us hang the Nawab! And Mungloo--he that is more clever than all of us--he that is cunning as a Thug--Mungloo shall be the Nawab!" So they began with the murder of the Commissioner; and he who personated Kurreim Khan, the assassin, played so naturally, that he sent the Commissioner screaming to his mother, with an arrow sticking in his arm. Then they arrested Kurreim Khan, and his accomplice, Unnia, a _mehwatti_, who turned king's evidence, and betrayed the sowar; and having tried and condemned Kurreim Khan, they would have hung him on the spot; but, being but a little fellow, he became alarmed at the serious turn the sport was taking, although he had himself set so sharp an example; so he took nimbly to his heels, and followed his young friend, the Commissioner.