Humbuggy

A Napoleonist . . . is generally a brave man who holds in decided contempt any . Humbuggy Show.

The Colonel. De Mortuis nil, but I’m glad, on my honor, that the year 1848 is fairly dead and gone. It was a racketty, troublesome customer. A quarrelsome, cut-throat of a year. There is no peace to its memory. No requiescat in pace for its grave. It ought to be buried under a railroad crossing, with a magnetic telegraph wire stuck through its body. Mr. Stout. My sentiments, Colonel. Figurative of course. The fact is, the past year, to borrow an expression, was very humbuggy. Revolutions are like six barrelled revolvers—figurative, you understand,—for instance, where one barrel hits, five miss.

The audience assembles, and the orator says, ‘You like my plays I wrote them to make money. They are humbug. You come to hear me lecture. I know what succeeds with the public—it is humbug. I—I say it—am a humbugger by profession, and to-morrow evening I invite you, who are so easily humbugged, to come and hear me read a play of mine, which I sold, and hope will succeed, and have therefore made as humbuggy as possible.’

This morning the people of the house were making a great noise—alternately battling with the Coolies, then turning to me would exclaim most supplicatingly, “Sahib, Sahib.” I asked the head servant what the difficulty was, he coolly replied, without looking up from his work, “Nothing, only they humbuggy very much.” On inquiring of the people, I found the “humbuggy very much” was that the sixteen Coolies refused to pay for their provisions of yesterday and this morning. So I made them “settle up.”

I fancy Dholepur is a very mean, humbuggy town; yet just opposite this dak bungalow are a tank and a pagoda, quite lovely.

The Gold Coast is humbuggy and knows it and knows you know it. That’s a lesson pretenders like Las Vegas, L.A., San Juan, Honolulu and Acapulco have yet to learn. They take themselves and their bad taste so seriously. But, though the M.B. to P.B. regulars defect now and then, visiting other promised lands in the approved jetsetty way, they always return to their Atlantis on the Atlantic.