Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial Practice
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.
- Twenty Years After
- Dis Aliter Visum
- De Profundis
- The Unlimited “Draw” of “Tick” Boileau
- My Christmas Caller
- The History of a Crime
- Prisoners and Captives
- “From Olympus to Hades”
- “Les Miserables.”
- A Nightmare of Rule
- What Came of It
- An Official Secret
- Le Roi en Exil
- A Scrap of Paper
- The Mystification of Santa Claus
- “Love in Old Cloathes”
- The Case of Adamah
- A Tale of ’98
- A Rather More Fishy Case
- The House of Shadows
- The Confession of an Impostor
- The Judgment of Paris
- Five Days After Date
- The Hill of Illusion
- Le Monde ou L'On S'Amuse
- An Intercepted Letter
- The Recurring Smash
- How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- “Under Sentence”
- The Dreitarbund
- In Memoriam
- On Signatures
- The Great Strike
- “The Biggest Liar in Asia”
- Deputating a Viceroy
- A Merry Christmas
- The New Year's Sermon
- New Year's Gifts
- Mister Anthony Dawking
- “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
- The Wedding Guest
- The Tracking of Chuckerbutti
- “Bread upon the Waters”
- A Free Gift
- A Hill Homily
- The “Kingdom” of Bombay
- Bombaystes Furioso
- A Day Off
- The Unpunishable Cherub
- In Gilded Halls
- “Till the Day Break”
- The Fountain of Honour
- The Burden of Nineveh
- His Natural Destiny
- That District Log-Book
- An Unequal Match
- A Horrible Scandal
- An Exercise in Administration
- My New Purchase
- Exercises in Administration
- The Dignity of It.
- Exercises in Administration
- In Wonderland
- In the Year ’92
- “A Free Hand”
- Susannah and the Elder
- The Coming K
- What the World Said
- An Interesting Condition
- The Comet of a Season
- Gallihauk's Pup
- The Inauthorated Corpses
- One Lady at Wairakei
- The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Why Snow Falls at Vernet
- The Cause of Humanity
- appendices
- Glossary
The Case of Adamah
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial Practice
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.
- Twenty Years After
- Dis Aliter Visum
- De Profundis
- The Unlimited “Draw” of “Tick” Boileau
- My Christmas Caller
- The History of a Crime
- Prisoners and Captives
- “From Olympus to Hades”
- “Les Miserables.”
- A Nightmare of Rule
- What Came of It
- An Official Secret
- Le Roi en Exil
- A Scrap of Paper
- The Mystification of Santa Claus
- “Love in Old Cloathes”
- The Case of Adamah
- A Tale of ’98
- A Rather More Fishy Case
- The House of Shadows
- The Confession of an Impostor
- The Judgment of Paris
- Five Days After Date
- The Hill of Illusion
- Le Monde ou L'On S'Amuse
- An Intercepted Letter
- The Recurring Smash
- How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- “Under Sentence”
- The Dreitarbund
- In Memoriam
- On Signatures
- The Great Strike
- “The Biggest Liar in Asia”
- Deputating a Viceroy
- A Merry Christmas
- The New Year's Sermon
- New Year's Gifts
- Mister Anthony Dawking
- “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
- The Wedding Guest
- The Tracking of Chuckerbutti
- “Bread upon the Waters”
- A Free Gift
- A Hill Homily
- The “Kingdom” of Bombay
- Bombaystes Furioso
- A Day Off
- The Unpunishable Cherub
- In Gilded Halls
- “Till the Day Break”
- The Fountain of Honour
- The Burden of Nineveh
- His Natural Destiny
- That District Log-Book
- An Unequal Match
- A Horrible Scandal
- An Exercise in Administration
- My New Purchase
- Exercises in Administration
- The Dignity of It.
- Exercises in Administration
- In Wonderland
- In the Year ’92
- “A Free Hand”
- Susannah and the Elder
- The Coming K
- What the World Said
- An Interesting Condition
- The Comet of a Season
- Gallihauk's Pup
- The Inauthorated Corpses
- One Lady at Wairakei
- The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Why Snow Falls at Vernet
- The Cause of Humanity
- appendices
- Glossary
Summary
1Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 6 July 1887.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 3 (28/3, p. 131) and Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 192).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: This is one of the series of articles attributed to one ‘Smith’, a civil servant who writes of his domestic affairs and whose voice we hear in this piece (see also ‘A Rather More Fishy Case’). The series gently mocks the Public Services Commission, then at work. The Smith articles were first collected in an unauthorised edition, called The Smith Administration, published in 1891 in Allahabad and then suppressed at RK's demand. In 1899 RK published a slightly different selection of the stories as The Smith Administration in From Sea to Sea. Neither selection includes ‘The Case of Adamah’.
Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, iii, 1609– 10.
“If any fault be found with the packing or contents of this box, the undersigned will feel obliged if this paper is be returned to them with remarks.
R––––––& Co.
Cheroot Manufacturers”The name of the packer, as “this paper” sets forth, is Adamah; and there is no fault to be found with the cheroots. My friends deny this; vowing that, though excellent to me, the smoker, the smell of the black, rank, little twists is poisonous and annoying to all within nose-range. But this is a frivolous objection, and my mind is full of larger issues.
I see reflected on the two square inches of “this paper” the whole of the mighty administration of India whereof I am a small part – a cog in a wheel or, having regard to weather at present, a heated bearing. “If any fault be found with the packing or contents of this box.” Why should R———— and Co. be so anxious for me to find fault, and why do they thrust the name of the packer, Adamah, under my nose? Even supposing that he had filled the box, for his own profit, with half-smoked stubs, do R———— and Co. suppose that I, seventeen hundred miles away, shall strike at Adamah, demanding his head per V.P.P. in the next consignment of coconadas? What concern have I with that distant Tamil? I would fain answer “none whatever,” but that my conscience tells me Adamah and I are in the same boat – or box, if you please.
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- Information
- The Cause of Humanity and Other StoriesThe Cause of Humanity and Other Stories Uncollected Prose Fictions, pp. 102 - 104Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018