bent my head down to look through, and
instantly found myself face to face with the
crape veil. "Sweet, sweet spot!" said the
muffled voice, speaking straight into my eyes
through the grating. The usual groans
followed, and the name of Mr. Badgery was
plaintively pronounced before I could recover
myself sufficiently to retreat to the house.

Wednesday is the day on which I am
writing this narrative. It is not twelve
o'clock yet, and there is every probability
that some new form of sentimental persecution
is in store for me before the evening.
Thus far, these lines contain a perfectly true
statement of Mrs. Badgery's conduct towards
me since I entered on the possession of my
house and her shrine. What am I to do?—
that is the point I wish to insist on—what
am I to do? How am I to get away from the
memory of Mr. Badgery, and the unappeasable
grief of his disconsolate widow? Any
other species of invasion it is possible to
resist; but how is a man placed in my unhappy
and unparalleled circumstances to defend
himself? I can't keep a dog ready to fly at Mrs.
Badgery. I can't charge her at a police-court
with being oppressively fond of the house in
which her husband died. I can't set man-
traps for a woman, or prosecute a weeping
widow as a trespasser and a nuisance. I am
helplessly involved in the unrelaxing folds
of Mrs. Badgery's crape veil. Surely there
was no exaggeration in my language when I
said that I was a sufferer under a perfectly
new grievance! Can anybody advise me?
Has anybody had even the faintest and
remotest experience of the peculiar form of
persecution under which I am now suffering?
If nobody has, is there any legal gentleman
in the united kingdom who can answer the
all-important question which appears at the
head of this narrative? I began by asking
that question because it was uppermost in
my mind. It is uppermost in my mind still,
and I therefore beg leave to conclude
appropriately by asking it again:

Is there any law in England which will
protect me from Mrs. Badgery?

A VERY BLACK ACT.

I AM an Editor—an Indian Editor—that is
to say, the editor of a Mofussilite or
provincial paper in British India. It does not
much signify, I fancy, what my weekly is
called, nor where published, though I may
mention by the way that it is in one of the
disturbed districts where murder, pillage,
and burnings are just now the principal
items of intelligence.

The duties of an editor in the Mofussil are
generally multifarious and onerous enough,
comprising as they do the financial, the
printing, the correspondence, the gossiping
work of the establishment, in addition to the
ordinary labours pertaining to the editorial
chair. At present, as for some time past, I
have tacked to my functions the duties of
armed volunteer, policeman, special messenger,
and anything else required by the state
at this critical juncture. To use the Irishman's
metaphor, I may be said to write my
editorials with a pistol in one hand and a
sword in the other; my workpeople are all
armed to the teeth, and my weekly issues are
actually delivered at the point of the sword.

Many an editorial effusion is interrupted
by an armed sortie against some of our
villainous Budmashes, who make their tooting
forays at all hours of the day or night.
Last week I had to fling down my pen,
mount my nag, and gallop off to escort, with
other of my townsmen, a goodly parcel of
government treasure, there being no European
troops at our station. My last issue
was delayed eighteen hours by my absence on
special military duty; and, unless matters
mend considerably, I may shortly be
compelled to publish my little "weekly" as a
"monthly."

Seeing what I have seen enacting about
me, and hearing from my correspondents in
the north-west of the horrible atrocities
perpetrated there by the scoundrels of Sepoys
and the Mohammedans of the country, and
meeting on many sides with glaring proofs of
the incompetency of our officials and the
general unfitness of John Company, to
govern aright this vast country, I
naturally enough jot down my floating ideas on
those matters, and imagine that in so doing I
am rendering the state some service by pen
and ink, as I also do with pistol and sword.
I had some faint hope of emulating in a
humble sphere and in a limited manner, the
usefulness of William Russell, of the Times.
The wavering irresolution of our Governor-
General, the timid counsels pervading the
Indian Cabinet, the weak truckling to
incipient mutineers, the false condonement of
treason, the pampering of doubtful Sepoys,
the cruel neglect of our own British soldiery;
these and many other topics have been and
would still have formed the subject-matter
of my editorial comments.

But my career in this work of duty has
been suddenly cut short by what I cannot
designate by any other name than a very
black act. We have before been favoured
with what was termed a Black Act—an
enactment for levelling the white European
to the depths of the black Asiatic—in our
criminal courts, criminal in more senses than
one; but this new legislative production
leaves the former far behind, in the deep
intensity of its blackness. The newspaper press
of India has been gagged, bound down, and
delivered over to the tender mercies of a
governmental censorship—the censorship of
Cannon Row and Leadenhall Street.

Be it known to all whom it may concern,
that in the city of Calcutta there have been
printed and published, for some time past,
sundry newspapers in the Bengalee and