St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1891-06-04
MISCELLANY.
LIEUTENANT GRANTS CHANCE.

Mr.. Rudyard Kipling invents.
It's scene is laid in Mr.. Kipling' S
own territory, and it deals with
dacoits and jungles, and the little
daring Goorkhas of whom Mr.. Kip
ling is so fond, and with native
princes and rajahs and hand-to-hand
fighting and glory of the British arms.
In the early part of April the Asso-
ciated Press, under the unfamiliar
date line of Calcutta, told of a mas
sacre in Manipur, wherever that may
be. where semi-barbarous native
Indians rose against the representa-
tives of the Empress of India, and
killed them treacherously while they
were negotiating terms of peace, and
TRYING to put the right raJah on the
throne from which troops of the
wrong rajah had driven him. The
news was partly rumOr, partly hor-
rible fact, and the names of many
commissioners and officers were given
asdead and as butchered after death.
And at the end of each newspaper
account was the brief statement:
Lieutenant Grant, who left Tamur
for Manipur with eighty men, has
not been heard from. He is believed
portant ending and an anti-climax.
Nobody but the Grants Of Grant, in
the Highlands of Scotland, who
'raised the Black Watch" knew or
cared about this unidentified and UNI
known Lieutenant Grant. What
was one lieutenant and eighty men
to three commissioners and colonies
and the commissioners wives and
the picked troops of the Forty-fourth
Goorkhas?
But on the days following came
fuller and more accurate accounts of
the massacre; and it was told how
the Manipuri had shelled the Resi-
dency with the same cannon the En-
press of India had sent them as
token of her royal good feeling; and
how the younger officers and Mrs.
Grimwood had escaped in the night,
and Travelled on foot by jungle paths
for 100 miles, living on roots, to be
rescued at the last by Captain Cow
ley hurrying forward with reinforce
ments; and how Mrs. GrimwOod's
husband and the others who had left
the Residency to arbltrate had been
cut into quarters, and thrown INTO
the mOat for the parish dogs to man
gle as they pleased. 1t read like
page from the history of the SepOy
mutinv, like a modern version of the
terrible stories of Cawnpore, Delhi,
and Lucknow, and it was blow at
the British rule in India, and a trial
to the hearts of every one who read
it, whether he read it in English or
translated into a foreign tongue.
But there was one saving clause, one
paragraph that lightened the rest for
every one who read it, for Lieutenant
Grant the unknown, marching, un-
conscious of massacres, between Ia
muir and Manipur, had at last been
"heard from" His paragraph came
at the end, as it had on the days be-
fore, modestly, as became his rank,
behind the colonies and commission
ers. Lieutenant Grant" it read,
with 80 men, has defeated 1000
Manipuri and has taken Fort
Thobal." Now nobody knew
whether Fort Thobal was bristling
with cannon or mud embankment,
but every one could appreciate that
80 into 1000 goes fifty times, and
that Lieutenant Grants chance was
only one in fifty when he charged up
the wall of Fort Thobal, and drove
the Manipuri across and over the
other side. And all over the world,
thanks to telegraphs and cables, the
name and fame of Lieutenant Grant
became momentous and familiar, not
only in the clubs of London, but in
the elevated cars of New York, and
at breakfast tables from Paris to
Portland, Oregon. For IT all the
world loves lover it loves a hero
next, and the chance that came to
Lieutenant Grant, and the way he
rose to it, became brilliant spot in
the gloomy tale of treachery, butch
cry, and laundering of the Manipur
massacre. Lieutenant Grant held
Fort Thobal for three days, and then
repulsed the Manipuri again at
Alongtaing in a fight that lasted
three long hot hours, during which
the Senaputty prince and his two
commanders were killed, and the
Manipuri were driven off into the
jungle by Lieutenant Grants men of
the Second Burmahs.
General Sir Frederick Roberts, the
commandments of the Indian
army, has congratulated Lieutenant
c. J. w. Grant, which is as it should
be, and Punch has given him full
page all to himself; it is also as it |
should be that Lieutenant Grant is
as handsome as his portrait shows |
him to be, and that he is only thirty
years old. 1T is the boys-the raw
boys-who do the fighting" Mulva-
ney says; and though Lieut.. Grant |
is no raw recruit, he is boy in years, |
and the Second Burmahs are but |
newly formed. Now, while the home
government sends out more commits
sioners to determine who plundered |
and who should be punished, let us
hope that some other Board of In
vestigation and Inquiry will do more
Grant than cOnUra tI1- !