The Project Gutenberg EBook of Behind the Bungalow, by EHA

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Title: Behind the Bungalow

Author: EHA

Release Date: April, 2005  [EBook #7953]
[This file was first posted on June 4, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, BEHIND THE BUNGALOW ***




Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





BEHIND THE BUNGALOW




Contents:
   Preface
   Engaging a Boy
   The Boy at Home
   The Dog-boy
   The Ghorawalla, or Syce
   Bootlair Saheb--Anglice, the Butler
   Domingo, the Cook
   The Mussaul, or Man of Lamps
   The Hamal
   The Body-guards
   That Dhobie!
   The Ayah



PREFACE



These papers appeared in the Times of India, and were written, of
course, for the Bombay Presidency; but the Indian Nowker exhibits
very much the same traits wherever he is found and under whatsoever
name.



ENGAGING A BOY




Extended, six feet of me, over an ample easy-chair, in absolute
repose of mind and body, soothed with a cup of tea which Canjee had
ministered to me, comforted by the slippers which he had put on my
feet in place of a heavy pair of boots which he had unlaced and taken
away, feeling in charity with all mankind--from this standpoint I
began to contemplate "The Boy."

What a wonderful provision of nature he is in this half-hatched
civilization of ours, which merely distracts our energies by
multiplying our needs and leaves us no better off than we were before
we discovered them!  He seems to have a natural aptitude for
discerning, or even inventing, your wants and supplies them before
you yourself are aware of them.  While in his hands nothing petty
invades you.  Great-mindedness becomes possible.  "Magnanimus AEneas"
must have had an excellent Boy.  What is the history of the Boy?  How
and where did he originate?  What is the derivation of his name?  I
have heard it traced to the Hindoostanee word bhai, a brother, but
the usual attitude of the Anglo-Indian's mind towards his domestics
does not give sufficient support to this.  I incline to the belief
that the word is of hybrid origin, having its roots in bhoee, a
bearer, and drawing the tenderer shades of its meaning from the
English word which it resembles.  To this no doubt may be traced in
part the master's disposition to regard his boy always as in statu
pupillari.  Perhaps he carries this view of the relationship too far,
but the Boy, on the other hand, cheerfully regards him as in loco
parentis and accepts much from him which he will not endure from a
stranger.  A cuff from his master (delivered in a right spirit)
raises his dignity, but the same from a guest in the house wounds him
terribly.  He protests that it is "not regulation."  And in this
happy spirit of filial piety he will live until his hair grows white
and his hand shaky and his teeth fall out and service gives place to
worship, dulia to latria, and the most revered idol among his penates
is the photograph of his departed master.  With a tear in his dim old
eye he takes it from its shrine and unwraps the red handkerchief in
which it is folded, while he tells of the virtues of the great and
good man.  He says there are no such masters in these days, and when
you reply that there are no such servants either, he does not
contradict you.  Yet he may have been a sad young scamp when he began
life as a dog-boy fifty-five years ago, and, on the other hand, it is
not so impossible as it seems that the scapegrace for whose special
behoof you keep a rattan on your hat-pegs may mellow into a most
respectable and trustworthy old man, at least if he is happy enough
to settle under a good master; for the Boy is often very much a
reflection of the master.  Often, but not always.  Something depends
on the grain of the material.  There are Boys and Boys.  There is a
Boy with whom, when you get him, you can do nothing but dismiss him,
and this is not a loss to him only, but to you, for every dismissal
weakens your position.  A man who parts lightly with his servants
will never have a servant worth retaining.  At the morning conference
in the market, where masters are discussed over the soothing beeree,
none holds so low a place as the saheb who has had eleven butlers in
twelve months.  Only loafers will take service with him, and he must
pay even them highly.  Believe me, the reputation that your service
is permanent, like service under the Sircar, is worth many rupees a
month in India.

The engagement of a first Boy, therefore, is a momentous crisis,
fraught with fat contentment and a good digestion, or with unrest,
distraction, bad temper, and a ruined constitution.  But,
unfortunately, we approach this epoch in a condition of original
ignorance.  There is not even any guide or handbook of Boys which we
may consult.  The Griffin a week old has to decide for himself
between not a dozen specimens, but a dozen types, all strange, and
each differing from the other in dress, complexion, manner, and even
language.  As soon as it becomes known that the new saheb from
England is in need of a Boy, the levee begins.  First you are waited
upon by a personage of imposing appearance.  His broad and dignified
face is ornamented with grey, well-trimmed whiskers.  There is no
lack of gold thread on his turban, an ample cumberbund envelopes his
portly figure, and he wears canvas shoes.  He left his walking-cane
at the door.  His testimonials are unexceptionable, mostly signed by
mess secretaries; and he talks familiarly, in good English, of
Members of Council.  Everything is most satisfactory, and you
inquire, timidly, what salary he would expect.  He replies that that
rests with your lordship:  in his last appointment he had Rs. 35 a
month, and a pony to ride to market.  The situation is now very
embarrassing.  It is not only that you feel you are in the presence
of a greater man than yourself, but that you know HE feels it.  By
far the best way out of the difficulty is to accept your relative
position, and tell him blandly that when you are a commissioner
saheb, or a commander-in-chief, he shall be your head butler.  He
will understand you, and retire with a polite assurance that that day
is not far distant.

As soon as the result of this interview becomes known, a man of very
black complexion offers his services.  He has no shoes or cumberbund,
but his coat is spotlessly white.  His certificates are excellent,
but signed by persons whom you have not met or heard of.  They all
speak of him as very hard-working and some say he is honest.  His
spotless dress will prepossess you if you do not understand it.  Its
real significance is that he had to go to the dhobie to fit himself
for coming into your presence.  This man's expectations as regards
salary are most modest, and you are in much danger of engaging him,
unless the hotel butler takes an opportunity of warning you earnestly
that, "This man not gentlyman's servant, sir!  He sojer's servant!"
In truth, we occupy in India a double social position; that which
belongs to us among our friends, and that which belongs to us in the
market, in the hotel, or at the dinner table, by virtue of our
servants.  The former concerns our pride, but the latter concerns our
comfort.  Please yourself, therefore, in the choice of your personal
friends and companions, but as regards your servants keep up your
standard.

The next who offers himself will probably be of the Goanese variety.
He comes in a black coat, with continuations of checked jail cloth,
and takes his hat off just before he enters the gate.  He is said to
be a Colonel in the Goa Militia, but it is impossible to guess his
rank, as he always wears muftie in Bombay.  He calls himself plain
Mr. Querobino Floriano de Braganza.  His testimonials are excellent;
several of them say that he is a good tailor, which, to a bachelor,
is a recommendation; and his expectations as regards his stipend are
not immoderate.  The only suspicious thing is that his services have
been dispensed with on several occasions very suddenly without
apparent reason.  He sheds no light on this circumstance when you
question him, but closer scrutiny of his certificates will reveal the
fact that the convivial season of Christmas has a certain fatality
for him.

When he retires, you may have a call from a fine looking old follower
of the Prophet.  He is dressed in spotless white, with a white turban
and white cumberbund; his beard would be as white as either if he had
not dyed it rich orange.  He also has lost his place very suddenly
more than once, and on the last occasion without a certificate.  When
you ask him the cause of this, he explains, with a certain brief
dignity, in good Hindoostanee, that there was some tukrar
(disagreement) between him and one of the other servants, in which
his master took the part of the other, and as his abroo (honour) was
concerned, he resigned.  He does not tell you that the tukrar in
question culminated in his pursuing the cook round the compound with
a carving-knife in his hand, after which he burst into the presence
of the lady of the house, gesticulating with the same weapon, and
informed her, in a heated manner, that he was quite prepared to cut
the throats of all the servants, if honour required it.

If none of the preceding please you, you shall have several varieties
of the Soortee tribe anxious to take service with you; nice looking,
clean men, with fair complexions.  There will be the inevitable
unfortunate whose house was burned to ashes two months ago, on which
occasion he lost everything he had, including, of course, all his
valuable certificates.  Another will send in a budget dating from the
troubled times of the mutiny.  From them it will appear that he has
served in almost every capacity and can turn his hand to anything, is
especially good with children, cooks well, and knows English
thoroughly, having been twice to England with his master.  When this
desirable man is summoned into your presence, you cannot help being
startled to find how lightly age sits upon him; he looks like twenty-
five.  As for his knowledge of English, it must be latent, for he
always falls back upon his own vernacular for purposes of
conversation.  You rashly charge him with having stolen his
certificates, but he indignantly repels the insinuation.  You find a
discrepancy, however, in the name and press him still further,
whereupon he retires from his first position to the extent of
admitting that the papers, though rightfully his, were earned by his
father.  He does not seem to think this detracts much from their
value.  Others will come, with less pronounced characteristics, and,
therefore, more perplexing.  The Madrassee will be there, with his
spherical turban and his wonderful command of colloquial English; he
is supposed to know how to prepare that mysterious luxury, "real
Madras curry."  Bengal servants are not common in Bombay,
fortunately, for they would only add to the perplexity.  The larger
the series of specimens which you examine, the more difficult it
becomes to decide to which of them all you should commit your
happiness.  "Characters" are a snare, for the master when parting
with his Boy too often pays off arrears of charity in his
certificate; and besides, the prudent Boy always has his papers read
to him and eliminates anything detrimental to his interests.  But
there must be marks by which, if you were to study them closely, you
might distinguish the occult qualities of Boys and divide them into
genera and orders.  The subject only wants its Linnaeus.  If ever I
gird myself for my magnum opus, I am determined it shall be a
"Compendious Guide to the Classification of Indian Boys."



THE BOY AT HOME



Your Boy is your valet de chambre, your butler, your tailor, your
steward and general agent, your interpreter, or oriental translator
and your treasurer.  On assuming charge of his duties he takes steps
first, in an unobtrusive way, to ascertain the amount of your income,
both that he may know the measure of his dignity, and also that he
may be able to form an estimate of what you ought to spend.  This is
a matter with which he feels he is officially concerned.  Indeed, the
arrangement which accords best with his own view of his position and
responsibilities is that, as you draw your salary each month, you
should make it over to him in full.  Under this arrangement he has a
tendency to grow rich, and, as a consequence, portly in his figure
and consequential in his bearing, in return for which he will manage
all your affairs without allowing you to be worried by the cares of
life, supply all your wants, keep you in pocket money, and maintain
your dignity on all occasions.  If you have not a large enough soul
to consent to this arrangement, he is not discouraged.  He will still
be your treasurer, meeting all your petty liabilities out of his own
funds and coming to your aid when you find yourself without change.
As far as my observations go, this is an infallible mark of a really
respectable Boy, that he is never without money.  At the end of the
month he presents you a faithful account of his expenditure, the
purport of which is plainly this, that since you did not hand over
your salary to him at the beginning of the month, you are to do so
now.  Q.E.F.  There is a mystery about these accounts which I have
never been able to solve.  The total is always, on the face of it,
monstrous and not to be endured; but when you call your Boy up and
prepare to discharge the bombshell of your indignation, he merely
inquires in an unagitated tone of voice which item you find fault
with, and you become painfully aware that you have not a leg to stand
on.  In the first place, most of the items are too minute to allow of
much retrenchment.  You can scarcely make sweeping reductions on such
charges as:- "Butons for master's trouser, 9 pies;" "Tramwei for
going to market, 1 anna 6 pies;" "Grain to sparrow" (canary seed!) "1
anna 3 pies;" "Making white to master's hat, 5 pies."  And when at
last you find a charge big enough to lay hold of, the imperturbable
man proceeds to explain how, in the case of that particular item, he
was able, by the exercise of a little forethought, to save you 2
annas and 3 pies.  I have struggled against these accounts and know
them.  It is vain to be indignant.  You must just pay the bill, and
if you do not want another, you must make up your mind to be your own
treasurer.  You will fall in your Boy's estimation, but it does not
follow that he will leave your service.  The notion that every native
servant makes a principle of saving the whole of his wages and
remitting them monthly to Goa, or Nowsaree, is one of the ancient
myths of Anglo-India.  I do not mean to say that if you encourage
your Boy to do this he will refuse; on the contrary, he likes it.
But the ordinary Boy, I believe, is not a prey to ambition and, if he
can find service to his mind, easily reconciles himself to living on
his wages, or, as he terms it, in the practical spirit of oriental
imagery, "eating" them.  The conditions he values seem to be,--
permanence, respectful treatment, immunity from kicks and cuffs and
from abuse, especially in his own tongue, and, above all, a quiet
life, without kitkit, which may be vulgarly translated, nagging.  He
considers his situation with regard to these conditions, he considers
also his pay and prospect of unjust emoluments, with a judicial mind
he balances the one against the other, and if he works patiently on,
it is because the balance is in his favour.  I am satisfied that it
is an axiom of domestic economy in India that the treatment which you
mete out to your Boy has a definite money value.  Ill-usage of him is
a luxury like any other, paid for by those who enjoy it, not to be
had otherwise.

There is one other thing on which he sets his childish heart.  He
likes service with a master who is in some sort a burra saheb.  He is
by nature a hero worshipper--and master is his natural hero.  The
saying, that no man is a hero to his own valet, has no application
here.  In India, if you are not a hero to your own Boy, I should say,
without wishing to be unpleasant, that the probabilities are against
your being a hero to anybody.  It is very difficult for us, with our
notions, to enter into the Boy's beautiful idea of the relationship
which subsists between him and master.  To get at it at all we must
realize that no shade of radicalism has ever crossed his social
theory.  "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" is a monstrous
conception, to which he would not open his mind if he could.  He sees
that the world contains masters and servants, and doubts not that the
former were provided for the accommodation of the latter.  His fate
having made him a servant, his master is the foundation on which he
stands.  Everything, therefore, which relates to the well-being, and
especially to the reputation, of his master, is a personal concern of
his own.  Per contra, he does not forget that he is the ornament of
his master.  I had a Boy once whom I retained chiefly as a curiosity,
for I believe he had the smallest adult human head in heathendom.  He
appeared before me one day with that minute organ surmounted by a
gorgeous turban of purple and gold, which he informed me had cost
about a month's pay.  Now I knew that his brain was never equal to
the management of his own affairs, so that he was always in pecuniary
straits, but he anticipated my curiosity by informing me that he had
raised the necessary funds by pawning his wife's bangles.
Unthinkingly I reproached him, and then I saw, coming over his
countenance, the bitter expression of one who has met with rebuff
when he looked for sympathy.  Arranging himself in his proudest
attitude, he exclaimed, "Saheb, is it not for your glory?  When
strangers see me will they not ask, 'Whose servant is that?"'  Living
always under the influence of this spirit, the Boy never loses an
opportunity of enforcing your importance, and his own as your
representative.  When you are staying with friends, he gives the
butler notice of your tastes.  If tea is made for breakfast, he
demands coffee or cocoa; if jam is opened, he will try to insist upon
marmalade.  At an hotel he orders special dishes.  When you buy a
horse or a carriage, he discovers defects in it, and is gratified if
he can persuade you to return it and let people see that you are not
to be imposed upon or trifled with.  He delights to keep creditors
and mean men waiting at the door until it shall be your pleasure to
see them.  But it is only justice to say that it will be your own
fault if this disposition is not tempered with something of a purer
feeling, a kind of filial regard and even reverence--if reverence is
at all possible--under the influence of which he will take a kindly
interest in your health and comfort.  When your wife is away, he
seems to feel a special responsibility, and my friend's Boy, when
warning his master against an unwholesome luxury, would enforce his
words with the gentle admonition, "Missis never allowing, sir."

It is this way of regarding himself and his master which makes the
Boy generally such a faithful servant; but he often has a sort of
spurious conscience, too, growing out of the fond pride with which he
cherishes his good name, so that you do not strain the truth to say
that he is strictly honest.  Veracity is the point on which he is
weakest, but even in this there are exceptions.  My last Boy was
curiously scrupulous about the truth, and would rarely tell a lie,
even to shield himself from blame, though he would do so to get the
hamal into a scrape.

I regret to say that the Boy has flaws.  His memory is a miracle; but
just once in a way, when you are dining at the club, he lays out your
clothes nicely without a collar.  He sends you off on an excursion to
Matheran, and packs your box in his neat way; but instead of putting
one complete sleeping suit, he puts in the upper parts of two,
without the nether and more necessary portions.  It is irritating to
discover, when you are dressing in a hurry, that he has put your
studs into the upper flap of your shirt front; but I am not sure it
does not try your patience more to find out, as you brush your teeth,
that he has replenished your tooth-powder box from a bottle of
Gregory's mixture.  But Dhobie day is his opportunity.  He first
delivers the soiled clothes by tale, diving into each pocket to see
if you have left rupees in it; but he sends a set of studs to be
washed.  Then he sits down to execute repairs.  He has an assorted
packet of metal and cotton buttons beside him, from which he takes at
random.  He finishes with your socks, which he skilfully darns with
white thread, and contemplates the piebald effect with much
satisfaction; after which he puts them up in little balls, each
containing a pair of different colours.  Finally he will arrange all
the clean clothes in the drawer on a principle of his own, the effect
of which will find its final development in your temper when you go
in haste for a handkerchief.  I suspect there is often an explanation
of these things which we do not think of.  The poor Boy has other
things on his mind besides your clothes.  He has a wife, or two, and
children, and they are not with him.  His child sickens and dies, or
his wife runs away with someone else, and carries off all the
jewellery in which he invested his savings; but he goes about his
work in silence, and we only remark that he has been unusually stupid
the last few days.

So much for the Boy in general.  As for your own particular Boy, he
must be a very exceptional specimen if he has not persuaded you long
since that, though Boys in general are a rascally lot, you have been
singularly fortunate in yours.



THE DOG-BOY



In Bombay it is not enough to fit yourself with a Boy:  your dog
requires a Boy too.  I have always felt an interest in the smart
little race of Bombay dog-boys.  As a corps, they go on with little
change from year to year, but individually they are of short
duration, and the question naturally arises, What becomes of them all
when they outgrow their dog-boyhood?  From such observations as I
have been able to make, I believe the dog-boy is not a species by
himself, but represents the early, or larva, stage of several
varieties of domestic servants.  The clean little man, in neat print
jacket and red velveteen cap, is the young of a butler; while
another, whom nothing can induce to keep himself clean, would
probably, if you reared him, turn into a ghorawalla.  There are
others, in appearance intermediate, who are the offspring of hamals
and mussals.  These at a later stage become coolies, going to market
in the morning, fetching ice and soda-water, and so on, until they
mature into hamals and mussals themselves.  Like all larvae, dog-boys
eat voraciously and grow rapidly.  You engage a little fellow about a
cubit high, and for a time he does not seem to change at all; then
one morning you notice that his legs have come out half a yard or
more from his pantaloons, and soon your bright little page is a
gawky, long-limbed lout, who comes to ask for leave that he may go to
his country and get married.  If you do not give it he will take it,
and no doubt you are well rid of him, for the intellect in these
people ripens about the age of fourteen or fifteen, and after that
the faculty of learning anything new stops, and general intelligence
declines.  At any rate, when once your boy begins to grow long and
weedy, his days as a dog-boy are ended.  He will pass through a
chrysalis stage in his country, or somewhere else, and after a time
emerge in his mature form, in which he will still remember you, and
salaam to you when he meets you on the road.  If he left your service
in disgrace, he is so much the more punctilious in observing this
ceremony, which is not an expression of gratitude, but merely an
assertion of his right to public recognition at your hands, as one
who had the honour of eating your salt.  I am certain an Oriental
salaam is essentially a claim rather than a tribute.  For this reason
your peons, as they stand in line to receive you at your office door,
are very careful not to salaam all at once, lest you might think one
promiscuous recognition sufficient for all.  The havildar, or naik,
as is his right, salutes first, and then the rest follow with
sufficient interval to allow you to recognise each one separately.  I
have met some men with such lordly souls that they would not
condescend to acknowledge the salutations of menials; but you gain
nothing by this kind of pride in India.  They only conclude that you
are not an asl, or born, saheb, and rejoice that at any rate you
cannot take away their right to do obeisance to you.  And you cannot.
Your very bhunghie does you a pompous salutation in public places,
and you have no redress.

The dog-boy's primary duties are to feed, tend and wash his charge,
and to take it for a walk morning and evening; but he is active and
very acute, and many other duties fall naturally to him.  It seems
hard that he should come under the yoke so early, but we must not
approach such subjects with Western ideas.  The exuberant spirits of
boyhood are not indigenous to this country, and the dog-boy has none
of them.  He never does mischief for mischief's sake; he robs no
bird's nest; he feels no impulse to trifle with the policeman.
Marbles are his principal pastime.  He puts the thumb of his left
hand to the ground and discharges his taw from the point of his
second finger, bending it back till it touches the back of the hand
and then letting it off like a steel spring.  Then he follows up on
all fours, with the action of a monsoon frog in pursuit of a fugitive
ant.  But liberty and the pride of an independent position amply
compensate any high-souled dog-boy for the loss of his few
amusements.

I have said that the dog-boy never does mischief for its own sake.
He would as soon do his duty for its own sake.  The motive is not
sufficient.  You shall not find him refusing to do any mischief which
tends to his own advantage.  I grieve to say it, for I have leanings
towards the dog-boy, but there is in him a vein of unsophisticated
depravity, which issues from the rock of his nature like a clear
spring that no stirrings of conscience or shame have rendered turbid.
His face, it is simple and childlike, and he has the most innocent
eye, but he tells any lie which the occasion demands with a freedom
from embarrassment which at a later age will be impossible to him.
He stands his ground, too, under any fire of cross-examination.  The
rattan would dislodge him, but unfortunately his guileless
countenance too often shields him from this searching and wholesome
instrument.  When he is sent for a hack buggy and returns after half-
an-hour, with a perplexed face, saying that there is not one to be
had anywhere, who would suspect that he has been holding an auction
at the nearest stand, dwelling on the liberality and wealth of his
master and the distance to which his business that morning will take
him, and that, when he found no one would bid up to his reserve, he
remained firm and came away.  Perhaps I seem hard on the dog-boy, but
my experience has not been a happy one.  My first seemed to be an
average specimen, moderately clean and well-behaved; but he was not
satisfied with his wages.  He assured me that they did not suffice to
fill his stomach.  I told him that I thought it would be his father's
duty for some years yet to feed and clothe him, but his young face
grew very sad and he answered softly, "I have no father."  So I took
pity on him and raised his pay, at the same time assuring him that,
if he behaved himself, I would take care of him.  His principal duty
was to take the faithful Hubshee for a walk morning and evening, and
when he returned he would tell me where he had gone and how he had
avoided consorting with other dog-boys and their dogs.  When matters
had gone on in this satisfactory way for some time, I happened to
take an unusual walk one evening, and I came suddenly on a company of
very lively little boys engaged in a most exciting game.  Their
shouts and laughter mingled with the doleful howls of a dozen dogs
which were closely chained in a long row to a railing, and among them
I had no difficulty in recognising my Hubshee.  Suffice it to say
that my dog-boy returned next day to his father, who proved to be in
service next door.  He was succeeded by a smart little fellow, well-
dressed and scrupulously clean, but quite above his profession.  It
seemed absurd to expect him to wash a dog, so, on the demise of his
grandmother, or some other suitable occasion, he left me to find more
congenial service elsewhere as a dressing-boy.  My next was a charity
boy, the son of an ancient ghorawalla.  His father had been a
faithful servant, and as regards domestic discipline, no one could
say he spared the rod and spoiled the child.  On the contrary, as
Shelley, I think, expresses it,


"He spoilt the rod and did not spare the child."


But if my last Boy had been above his work, this one proved to be
below it.  You could not easily have disinfected any dog which he had
been allowed to handle.  I tried to cure him, but nothing short of
boiling in dilute carbolic acid would have purified him, and even
then the effect would, I feel sure, have been only temporary.  So he
returned to his stable litter and I engaged another.  This was a
sturdy little man, with a fine, honest-looking face.  He had a dash
of Negro blood in him, and wore a most picturesque head-dress.  In
fact I felt that, aesthetically, he raised the tone of my house.  He
was hardworking, too, and would do anything he was told, so that I
seemed to have nothing to wish for now but that he might not grow old
too soon.  But, alas!  I started on an excursion one night, leaving
him in charge of my birds.  He promised to attend to them faithfully,
and having seen me off, started on an excursion of his own, from
which he did not get back till three o'clock next day.  I arrived at
the same moment and he saw me.  Quick as thought he raced upstairs,
flung the windows open and began to pull the covers off the bird-
cages; but I came in before the operation could be finished.  In the
interests of common morality I thought it best to eject him from the
premises before he had time to frame a lie.  About a week after this
I received a petition, signed with his mark, recounting his faithful
services, expressing his surprise and regret at the sudden and
unprovoked manner in which I had dismissed him, and insinuating that
some enemy or rival had poisoned my benevolent mind against him.  He
concluded by demanding satisfaction.  I wonder what has become of him
since.

I have said that there is a vein of depravity in the dog-boy, but
there must be a compensating vein of worth of some kind, an Ormuzd
which in the end often triumphs over Ahriman.  The influences among
which he developes do little for him.  At home he is certainly
subject to a certain rugged discipline; his mother throws stones at
him when she is angry, and his father, when he can catch him, gives
him a cudgeling to be remembered.  But when he leaves the parental
roof he passes from all this and is left to himself.  Some masters
treat him in a parental spirit and chastise him when he deserves it,
and the Boy tyrannizes over him and twists his ear, but on the whole
he grows as a tree grows.  And yet how often he matures into a most
respectable and trustworthy man!



THE GHORAWALLA, OR SYCE



A Boy for yourself, a boy for your dog, then a man for your horse;
that is the usual order of trouble.  Of course the horse itself
precedes the horse-keeper, but then I do not reckon the buying of a
horse among life's troubles, rather among its luxuries.  It combines
all the subtle pleasures of shopping with a turbid excitement which
is its own.  From the moment when you first start from the breakfast-
table at the sound of hoofs, and find the noble animal at the door,
arching his neck and champing his bit, as if he felt proud to bear
that other animal, bandy-legged, mendacious, and altogether ignoble
who sits jauntily on his back, down to the moment when you walk round
to the stable for a little quiet enjoyment of the sense of ownership,
there is a high tide of mental elation running through the days.
Then the Ghorawalla supervenes.

The first symptom of him is an indent for certain articles which he
asserts to be absolutely necessary before he can enter on his
professional duties.  These are a jhule, baldee, tobra, mora,
booroos, bagdoor, agadee, peechadee, curraree, hathalee, &c.  It is
not very rational to be angry, for most of the articles, if not all,
are really required.  Several of them, indeed, are only ropes, for
the Ghorawalla, or syce, as they call him on the other side of India,
gives every bit of cordage about his beast a separate name, as a
sailor describes the rigging of a ship.  But the fact remains that
there is something peculiarly irritating in this first indent.
Perhaps one feels, after buying and paying for a whole horse, that he
might in decency have been allowed to breathe before being asked to
pay again.  If this is it, the sooner the delusion is dissipated the
better.  You will never have respite from payments while an active-
minded syce remains on your staff.  You think you have fitted him out
with everything the heart of syce can desire, and he goes away
seemingly happy, and commences work at once, hissing like twenty
biscobras as he throws himself against the horse, and works his arms
from wrist to elbow into its ribs.  It looks as if it would like to
turn round and take a small piece out of his hinder parts with its
teeth, but its nose is tied up to the roof of the stable, and its
hind feet are pulled out and tied to a peg behind it, so that it can
only writhe and cultivate that amiable temper which characterizes so
many horses in this country.  And the syce is happy; but his
happiness needs constant sustenance.  Next morning he is at the door
with a request for an anna to buy oil.  Horses in this country cannot
sleep without a night-light.  They are afraid of rats, I suppose,
like ladies.  However, it is a small demand; all the syce's demands
are small, so are mosquitoes.  Next day he again wants an anna for
oil, but this has nothing to do with the other.  Yesterday's was one
sort of oil for burning, this is another sort of oil for cleaning the
bits.  To-morrow he will require a third sort of oil for softening
the leather nose-bag, and the oils of the country will not be
exhausted then.  Among the varied street-cries of Bombay, the "I-
scream" man, the tala-chavee-walla, the botlee-walla, the vendors of
greasy sweetmeats and bawlee-sugah, the legion of borahs, and that
abominable little imp who issues from the newspaper offices, and
walks the streets, yelling "Telleecram! tellee-c-r-a-a-m!" among them
all there is one voice so penetrating, and so awakening where it
penetrates, that--that I cannot find a fitting conclusion to this
sentence.  Who of us has not started at that shrill squeal of pain,
"Nee-ee-ee-ttile!"  The Ghorawalla watches for it, and stopping the
good-natured woman, brings her in and submits a request for a bottle
of neat's foot oil, for want of which your harness is going to
destruction.  She has blacking as well as oil, but he will call her
in for that afterwards.  He never concludes two transactions in one
day.  When he has succeeded in reducing you to such a state of
irritability that it is not safe to mention money in your presence,
he stops at once and changes tactics.  He brings the horse to the
door with a thick layer of dust on the saddle and awaits your onset
with the intrepid inquiry, "Can a saddle be kept clean without soap?"
I suppose a time will come when he will have got every article he can
possibly use, and it is natural to hope that he will then be obliged
to leave you.  But this also is a delusion.  On the contrary, his
resources only begin to develop themselves when he has got all he
wants.  First one of the leather things on the horse's hind feet
gives way and has to be cobbled, then a rope wears out and must be
replaced, then a buckle gets loose and wants a stitch.  But his chief
reliance is on the headstall and the nose-bag.  When these have got
well into use, one or other of them may be counted on to give way
about every other day, and when nothing of the original article is
left, the patches of which it is composed keep on giving way.  Each
repair costs from one to three pice, and it puzzles one to conceive
what benefit a well-paid groom can derive from being the broker in
such petty transactions.  But all the details of life in this country
are microscopical, not only among the poor, but among those whose
business is conducted in lakhs.  I have been told of a certain well-
known, wealthy mill-owner who, when a water Brahmin at a railway
station had supplied him and all his attendants with drinking-water,
was seen to fumble in his waistband, and reward the useful man with
one copper pie.  A pie at present rates of exchange is worth about
47/128 of a farthing, and it is instructive to note that emergency,
when it came, found this Croesus provided with such a coin.

Now it is evident that if the syce can extort two pice from you for
repairs and get the work done for five pies, one clear pie will
adhere to his glutinous palm.  I do not assert that this is what
happens, for I know nothing about it.  All I maintain is that there
is no hypothesis which will satisfactorily explain all the facts,
unless you admit the general principle that the syce derives
advantage of some kind from the manipulation of the smallest copper
coin.  One notable phenomenon which this principle helps to explain
is the syce's anxiety to have his horse shod on the due date every
month.  If the shoes are put on so atrociously that they stick for
more than a month, I suspect he considers it professional to help
them off.

Horses in this country are fed mostly on "gram," cicer arietinum, a
kind of pea, which, when split, forms dall, and can be made into a
most nutritious and palatable curry.  The Ghorawalla recognises this
fact.  If he is modest, you may be none the wiser, perhaps none the
worse; but if he is not, then his horse will grow lean, while he
grows stout.  How to obviate this result is indeed the main problem
which the syce presents, and many are the ways in vogue of trying to
solve it.  One way is to have the horse fed in your presence, you
doing butler and watching him feed.  Another is to play upon the
caste feelings of the syce, defiling the horse's food in some way.  I
believe the editor of the Aryan Trumpet considers this a violation of
the Queen's proclamation, and, in any case, it is a futile device.
It may work with the haughty Purdaisee, but suppose your Ghorawalla
is a Mahar, whose caste is a good way below that of his horse?  I
have nothing to do with any of these devices.  I establish a compact
with my man, the unwritten conditions of which are, that I pay him
his wages, and supply a proper quantity of provender, while he, on
his part, must see that his horse is always fat enough to work, and
himself lean enough to run.  If he cannot do this, I propose to find
someone who can.  Once he comes to a clear understanding of this
treaty, and especially of its last clause, he will give little
trouble.  As some atonement for worrying you so much about the
accoutrements, the Ghorawalla is very careful not to disturb you
about the horse.  If the saddle galls it, or its hoof cracks, he
suppresses the fact, and experiments upon the ailment with his own
"vernacular medicines," as the Baboo called them.  When these fail,
and the case is almost past cure, he mentions it casually, as an
unfortunate circumstance which has come to his notice.  There are a
few things, only a few, which make me feel homicidal, and this is one
of them.

I cannot find the bright side of the syce:  perhaps I am not in a
humour to see it.  Looking back down a long avenue of Gunnoos,
Tookarams, Raghoos, Mahadoos and others whose names even have grown
dim, I discern only a monotony of provocation.  The fine figure of
old Bindaram stands out as an exception, but then he was a coachman,
and the coachman is to the Ghorawalla, what cream is to skim milk.
The unmitigated Ghorawalla is a sore disease, one of those forms of
suffering which raise the question whether our modern civilization is
anything but a great spider, spinning a web of wants and their
accompanying worries over the world and entangling us all, that it
may suck our life-blood out.  In justice I will admit that, as a
runner, the thoroughbred Mahratta Ghorawalla has no peer in the
animal kingdom.  A sporting friend and I once engaged in a steeple-
chase with two of them.  I was mounted on a great Cape horse, my
friend on a wiry countrybred, and the men on their own proper legs,
curious looking limbs without any flesh on them, only shiny black
leather stretched over bones.  The goal was bakshees, twelve miles
away.  The ground at first favoured them, consisting of rice fields,
along the bunds of which they ran like cats on a wall.  Then we came
to more open country and got well ahead, but at the last mile they
put on the most splendid spurt I ever saw, and won by a hundred
lengths.

It is also only justice to say that we do not give the Ghorawalla
fair play.  We artificialise him, dress him according to our tastes,
conform him to our notions, cramp his ingenuity, and quench his
affections.  The Ghorawalla in his native state is no more like our
domesticated Pandoo than the wild ass of Cutch is like the
costermonger's moke.  We will have him like our own saddlery, plain
and businesslike, but he is by nature like his national horse gear,
ornamental, and if you let him alone, will effloresce in a red fez
cap, with tassel, and a waistcoat of green baize.  In such a guise he
feels worthy to tend a piebald horse, caparisoned in crimson silk,
with a tight martingale of red and yellow cord.  He can take an
interest in such a horse, and will himself educate it to walk on its
hind legs and paw the air with its forefeet, or to progress at a
royal amble, lifting both feet on one side at the same time, so that
its body moves as steadily as if on wheels, and, to use the
expressive language of a Brahmin friend of mine, the water in your
stomach is not shaken.  He will feed it with balls of ghee and
jagree, that it may become rotund and sleek, he will shampoo its legs
after hard work, and address it as "my son."  If it is disobedient,
he will chastise it by plunging his knee into his stomach, and if it
acquits itself well, he will plait its mane and dye the tip of its
tail magenta.  This loving relationship between him and his beast
extends even to religion, and the horse enjoys the Hindoo festivals.
During the Dussera it does not work, but comes to the door, festooned
with garlands of marigold, and expects a rupee.

The coachman is to the Ghorawalla what cream is to skim milk, that is
if you consider his substance.  As regards his art he is a foreign
product altogether, and I take little interest in him.  There is an
indigenous art of driving in this country, the driving of the
bullock, but that is a great subject.



BOOTLAIR SAHEB--ANGLICE, THE BUTLER



Some dogs, when they hear a fiddle, are forced to turn over on their
backs and howl; some are unmoved by music.  So some men are tortured
by every violation of symmetry, while some cannot discern a straight
line.  I belong to the former class, and my Butler belongs to the
latter.  He WOULD lay the table in a way which almost gave me a crick
in neck, and certainly dislocated my temper, and he would not see
that there was anything wrong.  I reasoned with him, for he is an
intelligent man.  I pointed out to him, in his own vernacular, that
the knives and forks were not parallel, that the four dishes formed a
trapezium, and that the cruet, taken with any two of the salt
cellars, made a scalene triangle; in short, that there was not one
parallelogram, or other regular figure, on the table.  At last a
gleam of light passed over his countenance.  Yes, he understood it
all; it was very simple; henceforth I should find everything
straight.  And here is the result!  He has arranged everything with
the utmost regularity, guiding himself by the creases in the
tablecloth; but, unfortunately, he began by laying the cloth itself
slantwise; consequently, I find myself with my back to one corner of
the room and my face to another, and cannot get rid of the feeling
that everything on the table is slightly the worse for liquor.  And
the Butler is in despair.  What on earth, he thinks, can be wrong
now?  He evidently gives it up, and so do I.

I have already treated of the Boy, and to devote another chapter to
the Butler may seem like making a distinction where there is no
difference; but there is in reality a radical difference between the
two offices, which is this, that your Boy looks after you, whereas
your Butler looks after the other servants, and you look after him;
at least, I hope you do.  From this it follows that the Boy
flourishes only in the free atmosphere of bachelordom.  If master
marries, the Boy sometimes becomes a Butler, but I have generally
seen that the change was fatal to him.  He feels a share at first in
master's happiness on the auspicious occasion, and begins to fit on
his new dignity.  He provides himself with a more magnificent
cumberbund, enlarges the border of gold thread on his puggree, and
furbishes up his English that he may converse pleasantly with mem
saheb.  He orders about the other servants with a fuller voice than
before, and when anyone calls for a chair, he no longer brings one
himself, but commands the hamal to do so.  He feels supremely happy!
Alas! before the mem saheb has been many weeks in the house, the
change of air begins to disagree with him--not with his body, but
with his spirit, and though he may bear up against it for a time, he
sooner or later asks leave to go to his country.  His new mistress is
nothing loth to be rid of him, nor master either, for even his
countenance is changed; and so the Butler's brief reign comes to an
end, and he departs, deploring the unhappy match his master has made.
Why could not so liberal and large-minded a saheb remain unmarried,
and continue to cast the shadow of his benevolence on those who were
so happy as to eat his salt, instead of taking to himself a madam,
under whom there is no peace night or day?  As he sits with his
unemployed friends seeking the consolation of the never-failing
beeree, the ex-butler narrates her ladyship's cantankerous ways, how
she eternally fidgeted over a little harmless dust about the corners
of the furniture, as if it was not the nature of dust to settle on
furniture; how she would have window panes washed which had never
been washed before; her meanness in inquiring about the consumption
of oil and milk and firewood, matters which the saheb had never
stooped to look into; and her unworthy and insulting practice of
locking up stores, and doling them out day by day, not to mention
having the cow milked in her presence:  all which made him so ashamed
in the presence of the other servants that his life became bitter,
and he was forced to ask for his ruzza.

Lalla, sitting next to him, remarks that no doubt one person is of
one disposition and another of another disposition.  "If it had been
my destiny to remain in the service of Colonel Balloonpeel, all my
days would have passed in peace; but he went to England when he got
his PENCIL.  Who can describe the calmness and goodness of his madam.
She never asked a question.  She put the keys in the Butler's hand,
and if he asked for money she gave it.  But one person is of one
disposition and another is of another disposition."

"That is true," replies the ex-butler, "but the sahebs are better
than the mem sahebs.  The sahebs are hot and get angry sometimes, but
under them a man can live and eat a mouthful of bread.  With the mem
sahebs it is nothing but worry, worry, worry.  Why is this so dirty?
Who broke that plate?  When was that glass cracked?  Alas! why do the
sahebs marry such women?"

Old Ramjee then withdraws his beeree from his mouth and sheds light
on the subject.  "You see, in England there are very few women, for
which reason it is that so many sahebs remain unmarried.  So when a
saheb goes home to his country for a wife, he must take what he can
get."

"It is a question of destiny," says Lalla, "with them and with us.
My first wife, who can tell how meek she was?  She never opened her
mouth.  My present wife is such a sheitan that a man cannot live
under the same roof with her.  I have sent her to her country ten
times, but what is the use?  Will she stay there?  The flavour has
all gone out of my life."

And they all make noises expressive of sympathy.

The Butler being commander-in-chief of the household forces, I find
one quality to be indispensable in him, and that is what the natives
call hookoomut, the faculty of so commanding that other men obey.  He
has to control a sneaking mussaul, an obstinate hamal, a quarrelsome,
or perhaps a drunken cook, a wicked dog-boy, a proud coachman, and a
few turbulent ghorawallas, while he must conciliate, or outwit, the
opposition headed by the ayah.  If he cannot do this there will be
factions, seditions, open mutiny, ending in appeals to you, to which
if you give ear, you will foster all manner of intrigue, and put a
premium on lies and hypocrisy; and it will be strange if you do not
end by punishing the innocent and filling the guilty with unholy joy.
In this country there is only one way of dealing with the squabbles
of domestics and dependents, and that is the method of Gallio, who
was a great man.

Besides the general responsibilities of his position as C.-in-C., the
Butler has certain specific duties, such as to stand with arms folded
behind you at meal time, to clean the silver, and to go to the bazaar
in the morning.  The last seems to be quite as much a prerogative as
a duty, and the cook wants to go to law about it, regarding the
Butler as an unlawful usurper.  He asserts his claim by spoiling the
meat which the Butler brings.  Of course, there must be some reason
why this duty, or privilege, is so highly valued, and no doubt that
reason is connected with the great Oriental principle, that of
everything a man handles or controls, somewhat should adhere to his
palm; but if you ask how this principle is applied or worked out, I
can only reply that that is a matter on which I believe not one of us
has any information, though for the most part we hold very emphatic
opinions on the subject.  I am quite certain that it may be laid down
for a general rule that the Butler prefers indirect to direct
taxation.  He certainly would not reduce salt and customs duties to
pave the way for an income tax.  Neither would a Viceroy, perhaps, if
he had to stay and reap the fruit of his works, instead of leaving
that to his successor--but that is political reflection which has no
business here.  The Butler, I say, wisely prefers indirect taxation
and prospers.  How, then, are you to checkmate him?  Don't!  A wise
man never attempts what cannot be accomplished.  I work on the
assumption that my Butler is, like Brutus, an honourable man,
treating him with consideration, and fostering his self-respect, even
at the cost, perhaps, of a little hypocrisy.  It is a gracious form
of hypocrisy, and one that often justifies itself in the end, for the
man tends to become what you assume that he is.  For myself, I
confess that I yield to the butler's claim to go to market, albeit I
am assured that he derives unjust advantages therefrom, more easily
than I reconcile myself to that other privilege of standing, with
arms folded, behind me while I breakfast, or tiffin, or dine.  I can
endure the suspicion that he is growing rich while I am growing poor,
but that argus supervision over my necessary food is like a canker,
and his indefatigable attentiveness would ruin the healthiest
appetite.  After removing the cover from the "beefysteak" and raising
one end of the dish that I may get at the gravy more easily, he
offers me potatoes, and I try to overcome an instinctive repugnance
to the large and mealy tuber under which he has adjusted the spoon in
order to lighten my labour.  After the potatoes there are vegetables.
Then he moves the salt a little nearer me and I help myself.  Next he
presses the cruet-stand on my attention, putting the spoon into the
mustard pot and taking the stopper out of the sauce bottle.  I submit
in the hope that I may now be allowed to begin; but he has salad or
tomatoes or something else requiring attention.  I submit once more
and then assume my knife and fork.  He watches his opportunity and
insinuates a pickle bottle, holding the fork in his right hand.  I
feel that it is time to make a stand, so I give him one unspeakable
look and proceed with my meal, whereupon he retreats and I breathe a
little more freely.  But no; he is at my left hand again with bread.
To do him justice, he is quite willing to save me annoyance by
impaling a slice on the knife and transferring it to my plate, but I
prefer to help myself, which encourages him to return to the charge
with butter and then jam.  This looks like the end, but his resources
are infinite.  His eye falls on the sugar basin standing beside my
teacup, and he immediately takes it up and, coming round to my left
side, holds it to my nose.  All this time sit I, like Tantalus, with
the savoriest of Domingo's "beefysteaks" before me and am not allowed
to taste it.  But I know that in every operation he is animated by an
exalted sense of blended duty and prerogative, and if I could really
open his mind to the thought that the least of his attentions was
dispensable, his whole nature would be demoralized at once; so I
endure and grow lean.  Another thing which works towards the same
result is a practice that he has of studying my tastes, and when he
thinks he has detected a preference for a particular dish, plying me
with that until the very sight of it becomes nauseous.  At one time
he fed me with "broon custard" pudding for about six months, until in
desperation I interdicted that preparation for evermore, and he fell
back upon "lemol custard."  Thus my luxuries are cut off one after
another and there is little left that I can eat.

Our grandfathers used to have Parsee butlers in tall hats to wait
upon them, but that race is now extinct.  The Butler on this side of
India is now a Goanese, or a Soortee, or, more rarely, a Mussulman.
Each of these has, doubtless, his own characteristics; but have you
ever stepped back a few paces and contemplated, not your own or
anyone else's individual servant, but the entire phenomenon of an
Indian Butler?  Here is a man whose food by nature is curry and rice,
before a hillock of which he sits cross-legged, and putting his five
fingers into it, makes a large bolus, which he pushes into his mouth.
He repeats this till all is gone, and then he sleeps like a boa-
constrictor until he recovers his activity; or else he feeds on great
flat cakes of wheat flour, off which he rends jagged-pieces and
lubricates them with some spicy and unctuous gravy.  All our ways of
life, our meats and drinks, and all our notions of propriety and
fitness in connection with the complicated business of appeasing our
hunger as becomes our station, all these are a foreign land to him:
yet he has made himself altogether at home in them.  He has a sound
practical knowledge of all our viands, their substance, and the mode
of their preparation, their qualities, relationships and harmonies,
and the exact place they hold in our great cenatorial system.  He
knows all liquors also by name, with their places and times of
appearing.  And he is as great in action as in knowledge.  When he
takes the command of a burra khana he is a Wellington.  He plans with
foresight, and executes with fortitude and self-reliance.  See him
marshal his own troops and his auxiliary butlers while he carves and
dispenses the joint!  Then he puts himself at their head and invades
the dining-room.  He meets with reverses;--the claret-jug collides
with a dish in full sail and sheds its contents on his white coat;
the punkah rope catches his turban and tosses it into a lady's lap,
exposing his curiously shaven head to the public merriment; but,
though disconcerted, he is not defeated.  He never forgets his
position or loses sight of his dignity.  His mistress discusses him
with such wit as may be at her command, and he understands but smiles
not.  When the action is over he retires from the field, divests
himself of his robes of office and sits down, as he was bred to do,
before that hillock of curry and rice.

Even good Homer nods, and I confess I am still haunted by the memory
of a day when my Chief was my guest, and the butler served up red
herrings neatly done up in--The Times of India!



DOMINGO, THE COOK



I do not remember who was the author of the observation that a great
nation in a state of decay betakes itself to the fine arts.  Perhaps
no one has made the observation yet.  It is certainly among the
records of my brain, but I may possibly have put it there myself.  If
so, I make it now, for the possibilities of originality are getting
scarce and will soon disappear from the face of the earth as
completely as the mastodon.  The present application of the saying is
to the people of Goa, who, while they carry through the world
patronymics which breathe of conquest and discovery, devote their
energies rather to the violin and the art of cookery.  The caviller
may object to the application of the words "fine art" to culinary
operations, but the objection rests on superficial thought.  A deeper
view will show that art is in the artist, not in his subject or his
materials.  Perusal of the Codes of the Financial Department showed
me many years ago that the retrenchment of my pay and allowances
could be elevated to a fine art by devotion of spirit, combined with
a fine sense of law.  And to Domingo the preparation of dinner is
indeed a fine art.  Trammel his genius, confine him within the limits
of what is commonly called a "plain dinner," and he cannot cook.  He
stews his meat before putting it into a pie, he thickens his custard
with flour instead of eggs, he roasts a leg of mutton by boiling it
first and doing "littlee brown" afterwards; in short, what does he
not do?  It is true of all his race.  How loathsome were Pedro's
mutton chops, and Camilo could not boil potatoes decently for a
dinner of less than four courses.  But let him loose on a burra
khana, give him carte blanche as to sauces and essences and spicery,
and all his latent faculties and concealed accomplishments unfold
themselves like a lotus flower in the morning.  No one could have
suspected that the shame-faced little man harboured such resources.
If he has not always the subtlest perception of the harmonics of
flavours, what a mastery he shows of strong effects and striking
contrasts, what fecundity of invention, what a play of fancy in
decoration, what manual dexterity, what rapidity and certainty in all
his operations!  And the marvel increases when we consider the
simplicity of his implements and materials.  His studio is fitted
with half a dozen small fireplaces, and furnished with an assortment
of copper pots, a chopper, two tin spoons--but he can do without
these,--a ladle made of half a cocoanut shell at the end of a stick,
and a slab of stone with a stone roller on it; also a rickety table;
a very gloomy and ominous looking table, whose undulating surface is
chopped and hacked and scarred, begrimed, besmeared, smoked, oiled,
stained with juices of many substances.  On this table he minces
meat, chops onions, rolls pastry and sleeps; a very useful table.  In
the midst of these he hustles about, putting his face at intervals
into one of his fires and blowing through a short bamboo tube, which
is his bellows, such a potent blast that for a moment his whole head
is enveloped in a cloud of ashes and cinders, which also descend
copiously on the half-made tart and the souffle and the custard.
Then he takes up an egg, gives it three smart raps with the nail of
his forefinger, and in half a second the yoke is in one vessel and
the white in another.  The fingers of his left hand are his strainer.
Every second or third egg he tosses aside, having detected, as it
passed through the said strainer that age had rendered it unsuitable
for his purposes; sometimes he does not detect this.  From eggs he
proceeds to onions, then he is taking the stones out of raisins, or
shelling peas.  There is a standard English cookery book which
commences most of its instructions with the formula, "wash your hands
carefully, using a nail brush."  Domingo does not observe this
ceremony, but he often wipes his fingers upon his pantaloons.  It
occurs to me, however, that I do not wisely pursue this theme; for
the mysteries of Domingo's craft are no fit subject for the
gratification of an irreverent curiosity.  Those words of the poet,


"Where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise,"


have no truer application.  You will reap the bliss when you sit down
to the savoury result.

Though Domingo is naturally shy, and does not make a display of his
attainments, he is a man of education, and is quite prepared, if you
wish it, to write out his menu.  Here is a sample


Soup.
Salary Soup.

Fis.
Heel fish fry.

Madish.
Russel Pups.  Wormsil mole.

Joint.
Roast Bastard.

Toast.
Anchovy Poshteg.

Puddin.
Billimunj.  Ispunj roli.


I must take this opportunity to record a true story of a menu, though
it does not properly pertain to Domingo, but an ingenious Ramaswamy,
of Madras.  This man's master liked everything very proper, and
insisted on a written menu at every meal.  One morning Ramaswamy was
much embarrassed, for the principal dish at breakfast was to be
devilled turkey.  "Devil very bad word," he said to himself; "how can
write?"  At last he solved the difficulty, and the dish appeared as
"D---d turkey."

Our surprise at Domingo's attainments is no doubt due very much to
the humble attire in which we are accustomed to see him, his working
dress being a quondam white cotton jacket and a pair of blue checked
pantaloons of a strong material made in jails, or two pairs, the
sound parts of one being arranged to underlie the holes in the other.
When once we have seen the gentleman dressed for church on a festival
day, with the beaver which has descended to him from his illustrious
grandfather's benevolent master respectfully held in his hand, and
his well brushed hair shining with a bountiful allowance of cocoanut
ointment, surprise ceases.  He is indeed a much respected member of
society, and enjoys the esteem of his club, where he sometimes takes
chambers when out of employment.  By his fellow servants, too, he is
recognised as a professional man, and called The Maistrie, but, like
ourselves, he is an exile, and, like some of us, he is separated from
his wife and children, so his thoughts run much upon furlough and
ultimate retirement, and he adopts a humble style of life with the
object of saving money.  In this object he succeeds most remarkably.
Little as we know of the home life of our Hindoo servants, we know
almost less about that of Domingo, for he rarely has his family with
him.  Is he a fond husband and an indulgent father?  I fancy he is
when his better nature is uppermost, but I am bound to confess that
the cardinal vice of his character is cruelty, not the passive
cruelty of the pure Asiatic, but that ferocious cruelty which
generally marks an infusion of European blood.  The infusion in him
has filtered through so many generations that it must be very weak
indeed, but it shows itself.  When I see an emaciated crow with the
point of its beak chopped off, so that it cannot pick up its food, or
another with a tin pot fastened with wire to its bleeding nose, I
know whose handiwork is there.  Domingo suffers grievously from the
depredations of crows, and when his chance comes he enjoys a savage
retribution.  Some allowance must be made for the hardening influence
of his profession; familiarity with murder makes him callous.  When
he executes a moorgee he does it in the way of sport, and sits, like
an ancient Roman, verso pollice, enjoying the spectacle of its dying
struggles.

According to his lights Domingo is a religious man; that is to say,
he wears a necklace of red beads, eats fish on Fridays, observes
festivals and holidays, and gives pretty liberally to the church
under pressure.  So he maintains a placid condition of conscience
while his monthly remittance to Goa exceeds the amount of his salary.
He rises early on Sunday morning to go to confession, and I would
give something to have the place, just one day, of the good father to
whom he unbosoms himself.  But perhaps I am wrong.  I daresay he
believes he has nothing to confess.

One story more to teach us to judge charitably of Domingo.  A lady
was inveighing to a friend against the whole race of Indian cooks as
dirty, disorderly, and dishonest.  She had managed to secure the
services of a Chinese cook, and was much pleased with the contrast.
Her friend did not altogether agree with her, and was sceptical about
the immaculate Chinaman.  "Put it to the test," said the lady; "just
let us pay a visit to your kitchen, and then come and see mine."  So
they went together.  What need to describe the Bobberjee-Khana?  They
glanced round, and hurried out, for it was too horrible to be endured
long.  When they went to the Chinaman's kitchen, the contrast was
indeed striking.  The pots and pans shone like silver; the table was
positively sweet; everything was in its proper place, and Chang
himself, sitting on his box, was washing his feet in the soup tureen!



THE MUSSAUL, OR MAN OF LAMPS



The Mussaul's name is Mukkun, which means butter, and of this
commodity I believe he absorbs as much as he can honestly or
dishonestly come by.  How else does the surface of him acquire that
glossy, oleaginous appearance, as if he would take fire easily and
burn well?  I wish we could do without him!  The centre of his
influence, a small room in the suburbs of the dining-room, which he
calls the dispence, or dispence-khana, is a place of unwholesome
sights and noisome odours, which it is good not to visit unless as
Hercules visited the stables of Augeas.  The instruments of his
profession are there, a large handie full of very greasy water, with
bits of lemon peel and fragments of broken victuals swimming in it,
and a short, stout stick, with a little bunch of foul rag tied to one
end of it.  Here the Mussaul sits on the ice numda while we have our
meals, and as each plate returns from the table, he takes charge of
it, and transfers to his mouth whatever he finds on it, for he is of
the omnivora, like the crow.  Then he seizes his weapon of offence,
and, dipping the rag end into the handie, gives the plate a masterly
wipe, and lays it on the table upside down, or dries it with a damask
table napkin.  The butler encourages him for some reason to use up
the table napkins in this way.  I suppose it is because he does not
like to waste the dhobie on anything before it is properly soiled.
When the Mussaul has disposed of the breakfast things in this summary
way, he betakes himself to the great work of the day, the polishing
of the knives.  He first plunges the ivory handles into boiling
water, and leaves them to steep for a time, then he seats himself on
the ice again, and, arranging a plank of wood in a sloping position,
holds it fast with his toes, rubs it well with a piece of bath brick,
and commences to polish with all the energy which he has saved by the
neglect of other duties.  Hour after hour the squeaky, squeaky,
squeaky sound of that board plays upon your nerves, not the nerves of
the ear, but the nerves of the mind, for there is more in it than the
ear can convey.  Every sight and every sound in this world comes to
us inextricably woven into the warp which the mind supplies, and, as
you listen to that baleful sound, you seem to feel with your finger
points the back of each good, new knife getting sharper and sharper,
and to watch its progress as it wears away at the point of greatest
pressure, until the end of the blade is connected with the rest by a
narrow neck, which eventually breaks, and the point falls off,
leaving the knife in that condition so familiar to us all, when the
blade, about three inches long, ends in a jagged, square point, the
handle having, meanwhile, acquired a rich orange hue.  Oh, those
knives! those knives!

Etymologically Mukkun is a man of lamps, and, when he has brushed
your boots and stowed them away under your bed, putting the left boot
on the right side and vice versa, in order that the toes may point
outwards, as he considers they should, then he addresses himself to
this part of his duty.  Old Bombayites can remember the days of
cocoanut, when he had to begin his operations during the cold season
by putting a row of bottles out in the sun to melt the frozen oil;
but kerosine has changed all that, and he has nothing to do but to
trim the wick into that fork-tailed pattern in which he delights, and
which secures the minimum of light with the maximum destruction of
chimneys, to smear the outside of each lamp with his greasy fingers,
to conjure away a gallon or so of oil, and to meet remonstrance with
a child-like query, "Do I drink kerosene oil?"  Then he unbends, and
gives himself up to a gentle form of recreation in which he finds
much enjoyment.  This is to perch on a low wall or big stone at the
garden gate, and watch the carriages and horses as they pass by.
Other Mussauls, ghorawallas, and passing ice coolies stop and perch
beside him, and sometimes an ayah or two, with a perambulator and its
weary little occupant, grace the gathering.  I suppose the topics of
the day are discussed, the chances of a Russian invasion, the
dearness of rice, and the events which led to the dismissal of Mr.
Smith's old Mussaul Canjee.  Then the time for the lighting of lamps
arrives, and Mukkun returns to his duties.

You might not perhaps suspect it, but Mukkun is a prey to vanity.
The pure oily transparency of his Italian complexion commands his
admiration, and he thinks much of those glossy love-locks which
emerge from his turban and curl in front of his ears.  Several times
a day he goes into his room to contemplate himself in a small hand
mirror, and to wind up the love-locks on his finger.  Poor Mukkun
has, indeed, a very human side, and the phenomenon which we recognise
as our Mussaul is not the whole of him.  By birth he is an
agriculturist, and there is in the environs of Surat a little plot of
land and a small dilapidated hut in one corner of it, overgrown with
monstrous gourds, which he thinks of as home, sweet home.  There are
his young barbarians all at play, but he, their sire, is forced to
seek service abroad because, as he practically expresses it, the
produce of his small field is not sufficient to fill so many bellies.
But, wherever he wanders, his heart--for he has a heart--flutters
about that rickety hut, and as he sits polishing your boots of a
morning, you may hear him pensively humming to himself:--


Beatus ille qui, procul negotiis,
   Ut prisca gens mortalium,
Paterna rura bobus exercet suis,
   Solutus omni foenore.


He puts a peculiar pathos into the last line, for he is grievously
haunted by an apparition in the form of an old man with a small red
turban, gold earrings, and grey beard parted in the middle, who
flourishes a paper in his face and talks of the debtors' gaol; and
hints that he will have the little house and field near Surat.
Mukkun first fell into the net of this spider many years ago, when he
wanted a few hundred rupees to enable him to celebrate the marriage
of his little child.  He signed a bond for twice the amount he
received then, and it continues to increase from year to year, though
he has paid the principal twice over in interest; at least he thinks
he has, but he is not a good accountant.  Every now and then he is
required to sign some fresh document, of the contents of which he
knows nothing, but the effect of which is always the same--viz., to
heap up his liabilities and rivet his fetters more firmly, and
punctually on pay day every month, the grim old man waylays him and
compels him to disgorge his wages, allowing him so much grain and
spices as will keep him in condition till next pay day.  In a word,
Mukkun is a slave.  Yet he does not jump into the garden well, nor
his quietus make with a bare bodkin.  No, he plods through life, eats
his rice and curry with gusto, smokes his cigarette with
satisfaction, oils his lovelocks, borrows money from the cook to buy
a set of silver buttons for his waistcoat, and when he tires of them,
pawns them to pay for a velvet cap on which he has set his heart.  In
short, he behaves a la Mukkun, and no insight is to be had by
examining his case through English spectacles; but it is our strange
infirmity, being the most singular people on earth, to regard
ourselves as typical of the human race, and ergo to conclude that
what is good for us cannot be otherwise than good for all the world.
Hence many of our anti-tyranny agitations and philanthropies, not
always beneficial to the subjects of them, and also many of our
misplaced sympathies.  We see a spider eating a fly, and long to
crush the spider, while we shed a tear for the fly.  But the spider
is much the higher animal of the two.  It labours long hours laying
out a net, and then waits all day for the fruit of its toil.  Insects
are caught and escape again, the net gets broken, and when, after
many disappointments, the spider secures a fat fly, what advantage
does it derive?  A meal; just what the fly got by sitting in a pit of
manure and sipping till it could sip no more.  Doom that fly to the
life which the spider leads, and it would drown itself in your milk
jug on the spot, unable to bear up under such a weight of care and
toil.  In this parable the fly is Mukkun and the spider is Shylock,
and my sympathies are not wholly given to the former.  I quite admit
that Shylock worries him cruelly, and if he had not given hostages to
fortune, he would abscond with a light heart to some distant station
where he might forget his old debts and contract new ones.  But this
is not the alternative before him.  The alternative is to take care
of his money, not to buy things which he cannot afford, to do without
the silver buttons, and postpone the velvet cap, all which would put
a strain on his mental and moral constitution, under which he would
wear out in a week.  He must find some other modus vivendi than that.
If he had lived in the world's infancy, he would have sold himself
and his family to someone who would have fed him and clothed him, and
relieved him of the cares of life.  But Britons never, never, never
shall be slaves, and under our rule Mukkun is forced to share that
disability; so he attains his end in an indirect way, and lives
thereafter in such happiness as nature has given him capacity to
enjoy.  Shylock will neither put him into gaol nor seize his field.
We do not send our milch cow to the butcher.  Shylock owns a hundred
such as he, and much trouble they give him.

Mukkun lives in dread of the devil.  Nothing will induce him to pass
at night by places where the foul fiend is known to walk, nor will he
sleep alone without a light.



THE HAMAL



The Hamal is a creature which gets up very early in the morning,
before anyone is out of bed, and opens the doors and windows with as
much noise as may be.  He leaves the hooks unfastened, that a feu-de-
joie may celebrate the advent of the first gust of wind.  He drops
the lower bolts of the doors, so that they may rake up the matting
every time they are opened.  Then he proceeds to dust the furniture
with the duster which hangs over his shoulder.  He does this because
it is his duty, and with no view to any practical result;
consequently it never occurs to him to look at what he is doing, and
you will afterwards find curiously shaped patches of dust which have
escaped the sweep of his "towal."  He next turns his attention to the
books in the bookcase, and we are all familiar with his ravages
there.  He is usually content to bang them well with his duster, but
I refer to high days, when he takes each book out and caresses it on
both sides, replacing it upside down, and putting the different
volumes of each work on different shelves.  All this he does, not of
malice, but simply because 'tis his nature to.  He does not disturb
the cobwebs on the corners of the bookcase, because you never told
him to do so.  As he moves grunting about the room, the duster falls
from his shoulder, and he picks it up with his toes to avoid the
fatigue of stooping.  When all the dusting is done, and the table-
covers and ornaments are replaced, then he proceeds to shake the
carpets and sweep the floor, for it is one of his ways, when left to
himself, to dust first and sweep after.  Finally he disposes of the
rubbish which his broom has collected, by stowing it away under a
cupboard, or pushing it out over the doorstep among the ferns and
calladiums.

Such is the Hamal in his youth, and as he grows older he gets more
so.  About middle life he sets hard, like plaster of Paris, his
senses get obfuscated, and a shell appears to form on the outside of
his intellect, so that access to his understanding becomes very
difficult.  Sometimes his temper also grows crabbed, and noli me
tangere writes itself distinctly across the mark of his god on his
old brow.  A Hamal in this phase is the most impracticable animal in
this universe.  When found fault with, he never answers back, but he
enters on a vigorous conversation with himself, which is like a tune
on a musical box, for it must be allowed to go until it runs itself
out; nothing short of smashing the instrument will stop it.  How well
I remember one veteran of this type, from whose colloquies with his
own soul I gathered that he had been fifty-six years in gentlemen's
service, and never served any but gentlemen until he came to me.  He
computed his age, I think, at seventy-two, and asked leave to attend
the funeral of his grandfather.  Sometimes, happily, the Hamal's
senility takes the direction of benevolence.  Who does not know the
benign, stupid old man, with his snowy whiskers and kindly smile,
which seems to grow kindlier with every tooth he loses!

It is a practical question whether you should endure the Hamal, or
address yourself to the task of his reformation, and I am content to
make myself singular by advocating the latter for two reasons;
firstly, because he cannot be endured; secondly, because I cherish a
fantastic faith in his reformability,--at least if you take him in
his youth, before he has set.  I believe we fail to cure him either
because we do not try, or because we dismiss him before we succeed.
Another great impediment to success in this enterprise is the foolish
habit of getting wrathful.  An untimely explosion of wrath will
generally blow a sensitive Hamal's wits quite out of his own reach,
and of course, out of yours; or, if he is of the stolid sort, he will
set it down as a phenomenon incidental to sahebs, but without any
bearing on the matter in hand, and he will go on as before.  Besides,
a state of indignation is very detrimental to your own command of the
language, and if you could in cold blood take your "Forbes" and study
some of the sentences which you fulminated in your ebullitions of
anger, you would cease to wonder that the subject of them was such an
idiot.


Hum roz roz hookum day,
Tum roz roz hookum nay,
Ooswasty lukree--(whack, whack)


went home, I have no doubt, but it is the gift of few to be at once
so luminous and so forcible.  Try handling your Hamal in another way.
Call him mildly--a mild tone thaws his understanding--and say to him,
"Look here, my son.  Do you see this gold writing on the backs of
these books?  For what purpose is it?"  He will reply, "Who knows?"
Then you can proceed, "That writing is the mark by which you may know
the head of any book.  Now consider, should a book stand on its
head?"  If he replies, "How should a book stand on its head?" then
you are getting access to his intelligence, and may lead him on
gradually to the conclusion that, whenever he puts a book into the
shelves, he should make it stand so that the writing on the back of
it may be uppermost.  I tell you he will beam with intelligence, and
rise earlier next morning to put his new learning into practice.
After a few days he will forget and relapse into his old ways, but
you must have patience.

After all, I think we could put up with the Hamal if only he would
not try to think.  This is his crowning vice.  In vain I try to
impress upon him that I engaged him to obey orders, and would rather
do the thinking myself.  Every now and then, at some particular phase
of the moon, he sets his intellect in operations and the consequences
are, as the Brahmin boy described the result of his examination,
"appalling."  It was our Hamal's duty to fill the filter, and at a
time when the water was very bad, orders were given that it should be
boiled before being filtered.  One day, my wife saw the Hamal in the
act of filling the filter, and it occurred to her to warn him to let
the water cool first, lest he might crack the filter.  "Oh yes," said
he, "I thought of that.  After boiling the water, I cool it down by
mixing an equal quantity of cold water with it, and then I put it
into the filter."

In Bombay, since hard times set in, the offices of Hamal and mussaul
have got a little mixed, and a man will show you characters
testifying that he has served in both capacities.  Such a man is,
properly speaking, simply a mussaul who has tried to do the Hamal's
work.  The cleaner of furniture and the lighter of lamps and washer
of plates and dishes cannot change places or be combined.  I have
read that the making of one English pin employs nine men, but it is a
vain boast.  The rudiments of division of labour are not understood
in Europe.  In this country every trade is a breed.  Rama is by birth
a cleaner of furniture.  This kind of employment came into the
country with our rule, so that the domestic Hamal, who is an offshoot
of the palkee hamal, or "bearer," has not had time to become what
fanciers would call a permanent strain, and you will find that you
can convert Rama into a chupprasse, a malee, or even a ghorawalla,
but into a mussaul never.  He is a shoodra, sprung from the feet of
Brahma, and the Brahman, who sprung from the head of the same figure,
despises him, but not with that depth of contempt with which he
himself despises the mussaul, who is an outcast, and sprang from
nowhere in particular.  He cannot conceive that thirty generations of
washing could purify the descendants of Mukkun so that he might touch
them and not be unclean.  You, his master, rank theoretically with
Mukkun, and he will neither touch your meats nor the plate off which
you have eaten them.  He will keep your house clean, and even perform
some personal services, for he has a liberal mind, and is there not
also a toolsee plant in a pot on a kind of earthen altar in front of
his hut, before which he performs purificatory ceremonies every
morning?  And does he not bathe after leaving your presence before he
eats?  If you pass by the clean place where he is about to cook his
food in the morning, you will see a large pot of water on the fire.
When this gets warm--for Rama is not a Spartan--he will stand on a
smooth stone, as sparingly clad as it is possible to be, and pour the
water on his head, polishing himself vigorously as it runs down his
limbs; then, after dressing his long hair and tying it in a knot on
the top of his head, he will sit down to eat, in a place by himself,
with the feeling that he has warded off defilement from that which
goeth in at his mouth.  That which goeth out of his mouth gives him
no concern.



THE BODY-GUARDS



Our Chupprassees are the outward expression of our authority, and the
metre-gauge of our importance.  By them the untutored mind of the
poor Indian is enabled to estimate the amount of reverence due to
each of us.  This is the first purpose for which we are provided with
Chupprassees.  The second is that they may deliver our commands, post
our letters, and escort the coming generation of Government servants
in their little perambulators.  As the number required for the first
purpose usually far exceeds the number required for the second, there
is danger of Satan finding mischief for their idle hands to do, and
it becomes our duty to ward off this danger by occupying their hands
with something which is not mischief.  This we do faithfully, and the
Chupprassee always reminds me of those tools we see advertised, which
combine hammer, pincers, turnscrew, chisel, foot-rule, hatchet, file,
toothpick, and life preserver.  Mrs. Smart bewailed the bygone day
when every servant in her house was a Government Chupprassee except
the khansamah and a Portuguese ayah.  I did not live in that day, but
in my own I have seen the Chupprassee discharge many functions.  He
is an expert shikaree, sometimes a good tailor or barber, not a bad
cook at a pinch, a handy table boy, and, above all an unequalled
child's servant.  There can be little doubt, it the truth were told,
that Little Henry's bearer was a Chupprassee.  He also milks the cow,
waters the garden, catches butterflies, skins birds, blows eggs, and
runs after tennis balls.  If you ask himself what his duties are, he
will reply promptly that it is his duty to wear the sircar's belt and
to "be present."  And the camel is not more wonderfully fitted for
the desert than is Luxumon for the discharge of these solemn
responsibilities.  He is like a carriage clock, able to sleep in any
conceivable position; and such is his mental constitution that, when
not sleeping, he is able to "be present" hour after hour without
feeling any desire for change of occupation.  Ennui never troubles
him, time never hangs heavy on his hands; he sits as patiently as a
cow and chews the cud of pan suparee, and he bespatters the walls
with a sanguinary pigment produced by the mastication of the same.
He needs no food, but he goes out to drink water thirty-five times a
day, and, when he returns refreshed, a certain acrid odour penetrates
every crevice of the house, almost dislodging the rats and
exterminating the lesser vermin.  To liken it to the smell of tobacco
would give civilized mankind a claim against me for defamation of
character.

I will sketch my ideal of a model Chupprassee.  He is a follower of
the Prophet, for your Gentoo has too many superstitions and scruples
to be generally useful.  He parts his short black beard in the middle
and brushes it up his cheek on either side, the ends of his moustache
are trimly curled, he wears his turban a little on one side, carries
himself like a soldier, and is always scrupulously clean.  He comes
into your presence with a salutation which expresses his own dignity,
while it respects yours.  He wishes to know whether the protector of
the poor has any commands for his slave.  When you intimate your
wishes he responds with a formula which is the same for all
occasions--"Your Lordship's commands shall be executed."  And they
are executed.  If he knows of difficulties or impossibilities, he
keeps them to himself.  Alas! this is an ideal, how antipodal
sometimes to the real!  I am thinking of the gigantic Sheikh Mahomed,
with his terrible beard and womanly voice, who would convey my
commands to a menial of lower degree and return in five minutes to
detail the objections which that person had raised.  Another type of
Mahomedan Chupprassee, whom we see is to abhor, expresses his opinion
of himself by letting half a yard of rag hang down from his turban
behind.  He calls himself a Syed and, perhaps, on account of the
sanctity implied in this, forbears to wash himself or his clothes.
This man is clever, officious, familiar, servile, and very fond of
the position of umbrella-bearer in ordinary to your person:
therefore, transfer him to the personal staff of some native
dignitary, where he will be appreciated.  If my model does not suit
you, there are many types to choose from.  We have the lofty and
sonorous Purdaisee, the Rajpoot, son of kings, the Bhundaree, or
hereditary climber of palm trees, the Israelite, the low caste,
useful, intelligent Mahar, and many more.  Even the Brahmin in this
iron age becomes a Chupprassee.  But three-fourths of all our belted
satellites come from one little district south of Bombay, known to
our fathers as Rutnagherry, re-christened Ratnagiri by the Hon. W. W.
Hunter, C.I.E., A.B.C., D.E.F., etc.  Every country has its own
special products; the Malabar Coast sends us cocoanuts and pepper;
artichokes come from Jerusalem; ducks, lace, cooks, and fiddlers from
Goa.  So Rutnagherry produces pineapples and Mahrattas, and the
Mahrattas do not eat the pineapples.  Till quite recently they
employed themselves exterminating each other, burning each other's
villages and crops, and inventing new ways of torturing old men to
make them confess where their money was buried.  We have stopped
these practices without stopping the religious arrangements for
keeping up the supply of the race; so the Mahratta marries, as in
duty bound, and multiplies, and then casts about for some way of
maintaining his growing family; and our Chupprassee system, looked at
politically, is a grand escape pipe.  Pandurang Huree gives the
Mahrattas the palm, as liars, over all the other races of India.  He
may be right, but where excellence is so universal, comparison
becomes doubly odious.  Some Mahrattas put rao after their names and
treat themselves with much respect, especially if they can grow a
little island of whisker on each cheek and run the moustache into it.
These men differ from common Mahrattas in the same way as Mr.
Wilberforce Jones, or Mr. Palmerston Smith, differs from the ordinary
run of Joneses and Smiths.

How uniformly does ambition rule us all!  The young rao, fired by the
hope of wearing a belt, makes a bold resolve to leave his father and
mother, his wife and children, his brothers, their wives and
children, his uncles, aunts, and cousins, and the little hut in which
they have all lived so happily since he was a little, naked, crawling
thing, dressed in a silver rupee.  He looks for the last time on the
buffalo and the lame pariah dog, ties up his cooking pots and a
change of raiment in a red handkerchief, and starts on foot, amid the
howling of females, for the great town, a hundred miles away, where
the brother-in-law of his cousin's wife's uncle is on the personal
staff of the Collector.  He fears that the water of the place may not
suit his constitution, but he risks that and other unknown perils.
Arriving at his destination, he works his interest by quartering
himself on his influential connection, who, finding that an extra
seer of rice has to be boiled for every meal, leaves no stone
unturned to find employment for him.  First a written petition is
drawn up by the local petition writer, in the following terms "Most
Honoured and Respected Sir,--Although I am conscious that my present
step will apparently be deemed an unjustifiable and unpardonable one,
tantamounting to a preposterous hardihood in presuming to trespass
(amidst your multifarious vocations) on your valuable time, yet
placing implicit reliance on your noble nature and magnanimity of
heart, I venture to do so, and ardently trust you will pardon me.
Learning that a vacancy of a sepoy has occurred under your kind
auspices, I beg most respectfully to tender my services for the same,
and crave your permission to invite your benign attention to the
episodes of my chequered life, though of a doleful and sombre nature,
and CONCATENATION of melancholy events that have made their
visitations.  My eldest brother died one year since, leaving an
heritage of a relict and two female issues to bemoan and lament his
premature and irreparable loss.  And two months since my revered
parent paid debt of nature, at 2 p.m. on 15th February, A.D. 18--,
thus leaving the entire burden of 13 (thirteen) souls on my
individual shoulders, which, in my present and forlorn
circumferences, I am unable to cope with.  I, therefore, throw myself
on your benevolent clemency and humane consideration, and implore you
to confer the vacancy in question which will enable me to meet the
daily unavoidable returning requisites of domestic life in all their
varied ramifications, and relieve a famishing family from the jaws of
penury and privation.  By thus delivering me from an impending
impossibility most prejudicial to my purse resources, you will confer
on your humble servant a boon which will be always vivid on the
tablet of my breast, never to be effaced until the period that I am
sojurning on the stage of this sublunary world's theatre."  The
petition goes on to explain that all the unhappy petitioner's efforts
to earn an honest livelihood by the perspiration of his brow have
been frustrated owing to the sins committed by his soul in a former
birth, and ends with religious reflections and prayers.  While this
is presented to the Collector, the candidate stands under a tree at
some distance and rehearses, with palpitating heart, the salaam he
will make if admitted to the august presence.  Life and death seem to
hang on the impression which may be produced by that salaam.  But the
cousin's wife's uncle's brother-in-law sets other machinery in
motion.  He humbles himself and makes up an old quarrel with the
Naik; he flatters the butler till that great man is pleased and
promises his influence; and he wins the Sheristedar's vote by telling
him earnestly that all the district knows he is virtually the
Collector and whatever he recommends is done.  Nor is the ayah
forgotten, for the ayah has access to the madam, and by that route
certain shameful matters affecting a rival candidate will reach the
saheb.  Now, supposing that the sins of a former birth fail to
checkmate all these machinations, and that the new arrival actually
finds himself swimming in the unfathomed bliss of a belt with a brass
plate, and a princely income of seven Queen's rupees every month, who
could foretell that almost before a year has passed he will again be
floundering in the mire of disappointed ambition?  Yet so it is.  He
hears of another Chupprassee with only eleven months' service against
his twelve, who has been promoted to eight rupees, and immediately
the canker of discontent eats into his heart.  Later on he finds that
the cup of his happiness will never be quite full until he gets ten
rupees a month, and when he has reached that giddy height, he will
see dawning on his horizon the strange and beautiful hope that he may
be a Naik.  It is a desperate ambition--


"He who ascends to mountain tops shall find
The highest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below."


Subordinate Chupprassees will slight his authority, his fellow Naiks
will disparage him, disappointed rivals will send in anonymous
petitions accusing him of all manner of villanies of which he is not
guilty, and, worse still, revealing the little briberies and
oppressions of which he is not innocent.  But who of us learns wisdom
in these matters?  The Naik soon comes to feel that if justice were
done to merit, he would be a Havildar.  After he has attained that
proud distinction, he retires to "husband out life's taper at its
close" in the same old hut, amidst the same conglomerate of
relations, but nephews and nieces, and grandchildren have taken the
place of uncles and aunts and parents.  The buffalo and the pariah
dog are apparently the same.  Then the whole range of official
machinery is put in motion to reward his long and faithful services,
and the Governor in Council grants him the maximum pension of four
rupees a month, subject to the approval of the Viceroy, and he spends
his few remaining days in gratitude to the Sircar.  But one thing
rankles in his mind.  Babajee, not nearly so good-looking a fellow as
himself, rose to be a Jemadar.

Ambition has, however, another more golden career for an enterprising
and ingenious Chupprassee; for is he not the portal through which the
humble petitioner may have access to the Collector, whose smile is
prosperity and his frown destruction?  And must not the hinges of the
portal be oiled that they may open smoothly?  Therefore, the
inimitable Sir Ali Baba made a point of dismissing a Chupprassee
whenever he began to grow fat, and he was wise, but in applying the
rule you must have regard to the man's rank.  The belt of an ordinary
peon may range from twenty to thirty inches according to length of
service, promotion to a Naik's position will add about three inches,
a Havildar will run to thirty-six or thirty-seven, and a Jemadar must
have something crabbed in his disposition if he does not attain to
forty-two inches.  These are normal measurements,--they consistent
with strict integrity as understood in the East.  By the blessing of
good temper and an easy life they may be slightly exceeded, but the
itching palm brings on a kind of dropsy easily recognisable to the
practised eye.  I have seen an unjust Jemadar who might have walked
with Sir John Falstaff.


Falstaff:  My honest lads, I will tell you what I am about.

Pistol:  Two yards, and more.



THAT DHOBIE!



I am an amateur philosopher and amuse myself detecting essence
beneath semblance and tracing the same principle running through
things the outward aspect of which is widely different.  I have
studied the Dhobie in this spirit and find him to be nothing else
than an example of the abnormal development, under favourable
conditions, of a disposition which is not only common to humanity,
but pervades the whole animal kingdom.  A puppy rending slippers, a
child tearing up its picture books, a mungoose killing twenty
chickens to feed on one, a freethinker demolishing ancient
superstitions, what are they all but Dhobies in embryo?  Destruction
is so much easier than construction, and so much more rapid and
abundant in its visible results, that the devastator feels a jubilant
joy in his work, of which the tardy builder knows nothing.  As the
lightning scorns the oak, as the fire triumphs over the venerable
pile, as the swollen river scoffs at the P. W. D., while arch after
arch tumbles into its gurgling whirlpools, so the Dhobie, dashing
your cambric and fine linen against the stones, shattering a button,
fraying a hem, or rending a seam at every stroke, feels a triumphant
contempt for the miserable creature whose plodding needle and thread
put the garment together.  This feeling is the germ from which the
Dhobie has grown.  Day after day he has stood before that great black
stone and wreaked his rage upon shirt and trowser and coat, and coat
and trowser and shirt.  Then he has wrung them as if he were wringing
the necks of poultry, and fixed them on his drying line with thorns
and spikes, and finally he has taken the battered garments to his
torture chamber and ploughed them with his iron, longwise and
crosswise and slantwise, and dropped glowing cinders on their
tenderest places.  Son has followed father through countless
generations in cultivating this passion for destruction, until it has
become the monstrous growth which we see and shudder at in the
Dhobie.

But I find in him, at least, an illustration of another human
infirmity.  He takes in hand to eradicate the dirt which defiles the
garment.  But the one is closely mingled with the very fibres of the
other, the one is impalpable, the other bulky and substantial, and so
the torrent of his zealous rage unconsciously turns against the very
substance of that which he set himself lovingly to purge and restore
to its primitive purity.  Indeed, I sometimes find that, while he has
successfully wrecked the garment, he has overlooked the dirt!
Greater and better men than the Dhobie are employed in the same way.

Such are the consolations of philosophy,


"But there was never yet philosopher
Who could endure the toothache patiently,"


much less the Dhobie.  He is not tolerable.  Submit to him we must,
since resistance is futile; but his craven spirit makes submission
difficult and resignation impossible.  If he had the soul of a
conqueror, if he wasted you like Attilla, if he flung his iron into
the clothes-basket and cried Vae victis, then a feeling of respect
would soften the bitterness of the conquered; but he conceals his
ravages like the white ant, and you are betrayed in the hour of need.
When he comes in, limping and groaning under his stupendous bundle,
and lays out khamees, pyatloon, and pjama, all so fair and decently
folded, and delivers them by tale in a voice whose monotonous cadence
seems to tell of some undercurrent of perennial sorrow in his life,
who could guess what horrors his perfidious heart is privy to?  Next
morning, when you spring from your tub and shake out the great jail
towel which is to wrap your shivering person in its warm folds, lo!
it yawns from end to end.  There is nothing but a border, a fringe,
left.  You fling on your clothes in unusual haste, for it is mail day
morning.  The most indispensible of them all has scarcely a remnant
of a button remaining.  You snatch up another which seems in better
condition, and scramble into it; but, in the course of the day, a
cold current of wind, penetrating where it ought not, makes you aware
of what your friends behind your back have noticed for some time,
viz., that the starch with which a gaping rent had been carefully
gummed together, that you might not see it, has melted and given way.
The thought of these things makes a man feel like Vesuvius on the eve
of an eruption; but you must wait for relief till Dhobie day next
week, and then the poltroon has stayed at home, and sent his brother
to report that he is suffering from a severe stomachache.  When the
miscreant makes his next appearance in person, he stands on one leg,
with joined palms and a piteous bleat, and pleads an alibi.  He was
absent about the marriage of a relation, and his brother washed the
clothes.  So your lava falls back into its crater, or, I am afraid,
more often overflows the surrounding country.

My theory of the Dhobie is a mere speculation, a hypothesis deduced
from broad, general principles.  I do not pretend to have established
it by scientific observation, and am very tolerant towards other
theories, especially one which is supported by many competent
authorities, and explains the Dhobie by supposing a league between
him, the dirzee and the Boy.  I think a close investigation into the
natural history of the shirt would go far to establish this theory as
at least partially true.  In spite of the spread of "Europe" shops,
the shirt is still abundantly produced from the vernacular dirzee
sitting crossed-legged in the verandah, and each shirt will be found
to furnish him, on the average, with about a week's lucrative
employment.  From his hands it passes to the Dhobie and returns with
the buttons wanting, the buttonholes widened to great gaping fish-
mouths, and the hems of the cuffs slightly frayed.  The last is the
most significant fact, because it leads to the discovery of one of
those delicate adaptations which the student of nature has so often
occasion to admire; for, on examination, we discover that the hem had
been made with the least possible margin of cloth, as if to
facilitate the process of fraying.  As we know that economy of
material is not an object with the dirzee, it has been maintained
that there is some connection here.  Next the shirt passes into the
hands of the Boy, who takes his scissors and carefully pares the
ragged edges of the cuffs and collar.  A few rotations of Dhobie and
Boy reduce the cuffs to the breadth of an inch, while the collar
becomes a circular saw which threatens to take your head off.  Then
you fling the shirt to your Boy, and the dirzee is in requisition
again.  Observation of white trousers will lead to similar results.
Between Dhobie's fury and Boy's repairs, the ends of the legs retreat
steadily upwards to your knees, and by the time the Boy inherits them
they are just his length.  Remember, I do not say I believe in this
explanation of the Dhobie.  I give it for what it is worth.  The
subject is interesting and practical.

Did you ever open your handkerchief with the suspicion that you had
got a duster into your pocket by mistake, till the name of De Souza
blazoned on the corner showed you that you were wearing someone
else's property?  An accident of this kind reveals a beneficent
branch of the Dhobie's business, one in which he comes to the relief
of needy respectability.  Suppose yourself (if you can) to be Mr.
Lobo, enjoying the position of first violinist in a string band which
performs at Parsee weddings and on other festive occasions.  Noblesse
oblige; you cannot evade the necessity for clean shirt-fronts, ill
able as your precarious income may be to meet it.  In these
circumstances a Dhobie with good connections is what you require.  He
finds you in shirts of the best quality at so much an evening, and
you are saved all risk and outlay of capital; you need keep no
clothes except a greenish black surtout and pants and an effective
necktie.  In this way the wealth of the rich helps the want of the
poor without their feeling it, or knowing it--an excellent
arrangement.  Sometimes, unfortunately, Mr. Lobo has a few clothes of
his own, and then, as I have hinted, the Dhobie may exchange them by
mistake, for he is uneducated and has much to remember; but, if you
occasionally suffer in this way, you gain in another, for Mr. Lobo's
family are skilful with the needle, and I have sent a torn garment to
the washing which returned skilfully repaired.

I suspect I am getting bitter and ironical, and it will be wise to
stop, for we are fickle creatures, the best of us, and it is quite
possible that, in the mild twilight of life, in the old country, I
shall find myself speaking benevolently of the Dhobie, and secretly
wishing I could hear his plaintive monotone again counting out my
linen at four rupees a hundred.



THE AYAH



I was roaming among the flower-beds and bowers of a "Peri's
Paradise," known in Bombay as The Ladies Gymkhana, when I was
startled by a voice like the sound of a passionate cart-wheel
screaming for grease.  "Lub ob my heart," it cried, "my eshweet,
don't crei! don't crei!"  The owner of the voice was a woman with a
negro type of countenance, as far as I remember, but her figure has
remained with me better than her face.  It was a portly figure, like
that of a domestic duck in high condition, and her gait was, as Mr.
Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee would say, "well quadrate" to the figure.
Engulphed in her voluminous embrace was a little cherub, with golden
curls and blue eyes dewy with passing tears--a pretty study of
sunshine and shower.  The great, bare arms of the pachyderm were
loaded with bangles of silver and glass, which jingled with a warlike
sound as she hugged her little charge and plastered its pretty cheeks
with great gurgling kisses, which made one shudder and think
involuntarily of the "slime which the aspic leaves upon the caves of
Nile."  Many of us have been Anglo-Indian babies.  Was there a time
when we suffered caresses such as these?  What a happy thing it is
that Lethe flows over us as we emerge from infancy, and blots out all
that was before.  Another question has been stirring in my mind since
that scene.  What feeling or motive prompted those luscious
blandishments?  Was it simple hypocrisy?  I do not think so.  The
pure hypocrite is much rarer than shallow people think, and, in any
case, there was no inducement to make a display in my presence.  What
influence could I possibly exercise over the fortunes of that great
female?  A maternal hippopotamus in the Zoo would as soon think of
hugging a young giraffe to propitiate the spectators.  Of course you
may take up the position that the hypocrisy is practised all day
before her mistress, and that the mere momentum of habit carries it
on at other times.  This is plausible, but I suspect that such a case
would rather come under the fundamental law that action and reaction
are equal and opposite.  Let us be charitable and look for better
reasons.  The mere milk of human kindness explains something, but not
enough, and I am inclined to think that the Ayah is the subject of an
indiscriminate maternal emotion, which runs where it can find a
channel.  The effect of culture is to specialise our affections and
remove us further and further from the condition of the hen whose
philoprogenitiveness embraces all chicks and ducklings; so it may
well be that the poor Ayah, who has not had much culture, is better
able than you or I to feel promiscuously parental towards babies in
general, at least, if she can connect them in any way with herself.
Towards babies in the care of another Ayah she has no charity; they
are the brood of a rival hen and she would like to exterminate them.
Again, we must love and hate, if we live at all.  The Ayah's horizon
is not wide, her sentiments are neither numerous nor complex, and her
affections are not trained to lay hold of the abstract or the
historical.  If you question her, you will find that her heart does
not bleed for the poor negro, and she is not in the habit of
regarding the Emperor Caligula with abhorrence.  She has one or two
brothers or sisters, but they are far away and have become almost as
historical as Caligula.  In these circumstances, if she could not
feel motherly towards babies, what feeling would be left to her?
And, perhaps, if we knew her story, baby has a charm to open up an
old channel, long since dry and choked with the sands of a desert
life, in which a gentle stream of tenderness once flowed, with
"flowerets of Eden" on its banks, and fertilised her poor nature.
But we do not know her story.  She says her husband is a cook.  More
about him she does not say, but she hugs "Sunny Baba" to her breast
and kisses him and says that nothing shall ever part her from him
till he grows to be a great saheb, with plenty of pay, when he will
pension her and take care of her in her old age.  And her eyes get
moist, for she means it more or less; but next day she catches a cold
and refuses food, saying that all her bones ache and her head is
revolving; then the horror of dying among strangers, "unhouseled,
disappointed, unaneled," proves too much for the faithful creature,
and she disappears without notice, leaving her darling and its mother
to look out for another Ayah.

It is a fortunate thing for us that the Ayah is able to conceive such
a devouring passion for our children, for it appears, from her own
statements, that but for this strong tie, nothing would induce her to
stay a day in our service where the constant broils with the other
servants, into which she is driven by her determination to be
faithful to her own mistress, make life almost unbearable to a
peaceable woman like her.  The chief object of her righteous
indignation is the "Bootrail."  She is so reluctant to make any
personal complaint, that she would pass over his grudging her a
little sugar in her morning tea, but when he takes away a whole
cupful for his own children, conscience compels her to tell her
mistress.  She has often pointed out to him that such conduct is not
right, and tried to reason with him, but he only insults her.  The
cook, being a notorious inebriate, plays into the "Bootrail's" hand,
on condition that the latter will not tell upon him.  Why did master
send away the dinner last night without touching it?  Because the
cook was on the floor and the matie had to do the work.  Chh!  Chh!
Chh!  It is very shameful and makes her feel so bad.  She herself is
a teetotaler, as her mistress knows.  That night when she was found
with a pillow in her arms instead of the baby, singing to it and
patting it to sleep, she had been smoking an English cheroot which a
friend had given her, and, as she is accustomed only to country
tobacco, it went to her head and stupefied her.  Nothing would induce
her to drink spirits, but the other servants are not like her.  The
mussaul is not a bad man, but the "Bootrail's" example infects him
too.  He barters the kerosine oil at the petty shop round the corner
for arrack.  As for the hamal, she is tired of fighting with him.
From this account of herself you will be able to infer that the Ayah
is not a favourite with the other servants; but she is powerful, and
so with oriental prudence they veil their feelings.  The butler
indeed, tries to be proud and risks ruin, but the mussaul truckles to
her, and the cook, who can spoil her dinner, and has some control
over her, trims between her and the butler.  The hamal is
impracticable, and the chupprassees adhere to the party in power for
the time being.

The Ayah is the "society" newspaper of small stations, and is
indispensable.  The barber is the general newsagent, and, as we part
with our beards in the morning, we learn from him all particulars of
the dinner at the general's last night, and of the engagement that
resulted between the pretty Missy Baba and the captain who has been
so much about the house; also when the marriage is to take place, if
the captain can get out of his debts, the exact amount of which Old
Tom knows.  He can tell us, too, the reason why she "jawaubed" him so
often, being put up to it by her mother in the interests of a rival
suitor, and he has authentic information as to the real grounds of
the mother's change of tactics.  But Old Tom is himself dependent on
Ayahs, and there are matters beyond his range, matters which even in
an Indian station cannot reach us by any male channel.  They trickle
from madam to Ayah, from Ayah to Ayah, and from Ayah to madam.  Thus
they ooze from house to house, and we are all saved from judging our
neighbours by outward appearances.

That scene in the Ladies' Gymkhana comes back and haunts me.  What if
the impress of those swarthy lips on that fair cheek are but an
outward symbol of impressions on a mind still as fair and pure,
impressions which soap and water will not purge away!  Yes, it is so.
The Ayah hangs like a black cloud over and around the infant mind,
and its earliest outlooks on the world are tinted by that medium.  It
lies with wondering blue eyes watching the coloured toys which she
dangles before it, and takes in the elements of form and colour.  She
pats it to sleep, and, on the borders of dream-land, those "sphere-
born, harmonious sisters, voice and verse," visit it in the form of a
plaintive ditty, which has for its simple burden,


Little, little fish
In bitter, bitter oil.
I will not part with one of them for three pice and a half.


As its mind expands, new mysteries of the universe unfold themselves
through the same interpreter.  It learns to see through the
hollowness of promises and threats before it knows the words in which
they are framed.  With the knowledge of words comes the knowledge of
their use as means of concealing the truth and gaining its little
ends.  Then the painful experience of discipline and punishment
reveals the same motherly figure in the new light of a protector and
comforter, and it learns to contrast her with the stern persons whom
she has taught it to call pa-pa and ma-ma.  When they refuse anything
on which it has set its childish heart, it knows to whom to go for
sympathy.  She will console it and teach little artifices, by which
it may evade or circumvent them.  She supplies discipline of another
kind, however, and the yet simple trusting mind of the little
Pantheist lives in terror of papa's red-faced friend with the big
stomach, who eats up ten or twelve little children every day, and of
the Borah with the great box full of black ants, in which he shuts up
naughty boys till the ants pick the flesh from their disobedient
bones.  When it goes to the bandstand, it gazes from a safe distance
on the big drum, full of boys and girls who would not let their hair
be combed:  it hears their groans at every stroke of the terrible
drumstick.  Thus the religious side of the tender nature is
developed, and Ayah is the priestess.  Under the same guidance it
will, as it grows older, tread paths of knowledge which its parents
never trod.  Whither will they lead it?  We know not who never joined
in the familiar chat of Ayahs and servants, but imagination "bodies
forth the forms of things unseen" and shudders.  Let us rejoice that
a merciful superstition, which regards the climate of India as deadly
to European children, will step in and save the little soul.  The
climate would do it no harm, but there is a moral miasma more baneful
than any which rises from the pestilential swamps of the Terai, or
the Bombay Flats.

P. S.--I have just taken another look at our present Ayah.  She is a
little old woman from Goa, with humorous "crow's feet" at the corners
of her kind eyes.  She is very retiring and modest, and all the
servants seem fond of her.  It is evident that nature is various, and
we cannot all be types.



R. R.  THE PUNDIT



The Pundit is like duty; his cough rouses us from our beds in the
morning like the voice of conscience.  Why must we pass examinations?
Not that we may know the language of the people, for it is matter of
daily observation, that of all the mysteries which perplex the humble
mind of the country bumpkin in this land, causing him to scratch his--
well, not his head--there is none which he gives up as hopeless
sooner than the strange sounds addressed to him by the young saheb
who has just passed his higher standard.  He joins his palms in loyal
acquiescence, and asserts that the gentleman is his father and
mother.  It was Swift, was it not, who suggested that all high
offices of state should be filled by lot, because the result would be
on the whole quite as satisfactory as that obtained by the present
system, while disappointed candidates would curse Fortune, who has a
broader back than the Prime Minister.  No doubt examinations were
introduced on the same sort of principle, to act as a buffer between
the train of candidates and the engine of Government.  That the
examination often comes after instead of before the appointment is a
necessary modification, without which no room would be left for the
play of those kindly feelings for kith and kin which we bitterly
nickname nepotism.  Under this arrangement I have known a needy nepos
of H. E. himself provided with a salary for a whole year, till he
could hold the examination at bay no longer, when he evacuated his
position and retreated to his friends.  Whatever the explanation of
the matter may be, it falls to the lot of most of us to experience
the Pundit.  I may remark here that he is very commonly called a
Moonshee, on the same principle on which a horse is not called a cow.
The Pundit is not a Moonshee.  The Moonshee is a follower of the
Prophet and teaches Oordoo, or Hindoostanee, while the Pundit is a
Brahmin and instructs you in Marathee or Gujarathee.  The Moonshee
struggles to get you to disgorge the sound ghain and leads you
through the enchanted mazes of the Bagh-o-Bahar; the Pundit
distinguishes between the kurmunnee and the kurturree prayog, and has
many knotty points of mythology to expound, in order that you may
rightly understand his idioms and appreciate his proverbial sayings.
Of Pundits there are three species, quite distinct from each other.
The first I would recommend if your object should, by any chance, be
to learn to speak the language intelligibly; but he knows no English,
and you must gird yourself to work if you employ him.  This sort of
teacher does not suit the tastes of the present generation and is
dying out, I think.  The second kind is invaluable if your purpose is
to pass an examination.  He knows English well, dresses smartly, and
is altogether a superior sort of person to the last, especially in
his own estimation; but appearances are delusive, and the sign that
really distinguishes him from other Pundits is that he enjoys in a
high degree the esteem and confidence of a native member of the
examining body.  Another unfailing characteristic of him is that he
requires a monstrous monthly stipend and the promise of a handsome
douceur if you pass; but then you have the satisfaction of knowing
that, if you fulfil the conditions, that happy result is certain.
His system leaves no room for failure.  Some people regard this man
as a myth, but I have had authentic accounts of him from numerous
young gentlemen who had failed in their examinations simply, as they
themselves assured me, because they did not employ him.  The third
class consists of young men, aspirants to University honours and
others, with some knowledge of English and a laudable desire to
improve it by conversation with Englishmen.  I do not know for what
purpose this sort of Pundit is useful.

Old Ragunath Rao belonged to the first of these three classes.  He
knew no English, and he desired to know none, neither English words
nor English thoughts.  He was an undiluted Brahmin.  He had taught a
former generation of Anglo-Indians, long since retired, or in their
graves, and one or two of these, who were very religious men, had
impressed him by their characters so deeply that he always spoke of
them with reverence, as not men but divinities.  The tide had ebbed
away from him, and no one employed him now:  he was very poor.  His
face was heavy, his ears like beef-steaks, with a fringe of long
bristles round the edge and a bushy tuft of the same sprouting from
the inside.  His features were not pleasing, but strongly expressive
of character, stubborn Hindoo character, self-disciplined, self-
satisfied, and in a set attitude of defence against the invasions of
novelty.  His athletic intellect was exercised in all manner of
curious questions.  The only matter about which it never concerned
itself was reality, the existence of which he probably doubted.  At
any rate, he considered truth, right, wrong, to be subjects for
speculative philosophy.  As a practical man, he had minutely
acquainted himself with all the things that behoved to be believed by
an orthodox Brahmin, and he was not the man to give way to mere
facts.  This frame of mind begot in him a large tolerance, for what
possible connection could there be between what it became him to
believe and what it became you to believe?  If his son had turned a
Christian, he could have swung him from a tree by his thumbs and toes
and flagellated him from below with acute pleasure; but if you
expounded Christian doctrines and morals to him, he would listen with
profound admiration.  A Christian who lived up to his creed he
respected unfeignedly.  Strange old man! like one of his own idols,
not modelled upon anything that is in heaven or on earth.  Are they
not, he and the idol, the fruit of the same tree?

What memories rise out of their graves at the mention of old
Ragunath!  Just about a quarter of an hour after his time he comes
slowly up the steps, panting for breath, and leaving his shoes at the
door, walks in with a quasi courtly salutation.  As soon as he can
recover his voice, he tells of a hair-breadth escape from sudden
death.  As he was crossing the road, a carriage and pair bore down on
him.  He stood petrified with terror, not knowing whether to hurry
forward or turn back, but just as the horses were upon him, he made a
frantic effort and gained the side-walk!  He infers that his time to
die had not arrived, and takes the occasion to impart some
information about the planets and their influence on human destinies.
Then we seat ourselves, and he takes my exercise (translation from
Grant Duff), and reads it slowly in a muffled voice, which is forced
to make its exit by the nose, the mouth being occupied with cardamoms
or betel nut.  As he reads he corrects with a pencil, but gives no
explanation of his corrections; for you must not expect him to teach:
he is a mine simply, in which you must dig for what you want.  One
thing you may depend on, that whatever you extract from that mine
will be worth having, indigenous treasure, current wherever Hindoo
thought is moving, very different from the foreign-flavoured pabulum
with which your English smattering instructor charges his feeding
bottle.  The exercise gives Ragunath an opportunity of digressing
into some traditional incident of Maratha history which escaped the
researches of Mr. Grant Duff, an incident generally in which Maratha
cunning (sagacity he calls it) triumphed over English stupidity.
After the exercise comes the inevitable petition.  I do not remember
the subject of it--some grievance no doubt connected with hereditary
rights in land--but it matters little; the whole document might as
well be a Moabite stone recording the wars of Mesha with Jehoram, for
not a letter of it stands out recognisable to my eyes.  Indeed, no
letter, or word either, stands out at all; the scribe seems never to
have lifted his pen from his paper except for ink, and that generally
in the middle of a word.  However, Ragunath takes the greasy paper
from my hand, remarks that the handwriting is good, and starts off
reading it, or, I should say, intoning it, on exactly the same
principle, viz., never pausing except for breath, and that generally
in the middle of a word.  Then we read together the "Garland of
Pearls," which he illuminates with notes of his own.  Speaking of old
age, he remarks that the hair of some men ripens sooner than that of
others, but that our heads must all grow grey as our brains get thin.
He discourses on anatomy, food, digestion, the advisability of lying
down on the left side for twenty minutes after meals, and on many
things in heaven and earth which are not dreamed of in our
philosophy.  As the morning wears on, the old man, who is not
accustomed to sitting on chairs, begins to fidget, and shows signs of
a desire to gather up his feet into the seat and nurse them.  At last
drowsiness overtakes him.  His eyes are open, but his mind is asleep,
and I may do as I please with grammar and idiom:  even when I yawn,
he omits to snap his fingers and lets the devil skip down my throat.
When he awakes he suggests that it is time to stop, and asks leave
for the next day, as he has to renew his sacred thread.  Poor old
Ragunath!  I fear he has gone long since to the burning ground on the
banks of the Moota Moola.

Before we part let me give you a hint.  Always keep a separate chair
for your Pundit, one isolated on glass legs, if possible.  Even this
does not afford complete security, for he now and then detects one of
the many insects which you have watched coursing up and down his
white scarf, and picking it off with his finger and thumb, puts it on
the floor.  His creed forbids him to take the life of anything which
may possibly be the corporeal habitation of the spirit of one of his
deceased ancestors, but these little insects irritate him, so he
deports them as we do our loafers.



HURREE, THE DIRZEE



A warm altercation is going on in the verandah.  A little human
animal, with a very large red turban on his little head, stuck full
of pins and threaded needles, stands on all fours over a garment of
an unmentionable kind, which I recognise as belonging to me, and a
piece of cloth lies before him, out of which he has cut a figure
resembling the said garment.  The scissors with which the operation
was performed are still lying open upon the ground before him.  His
head is thrown so far back that the great turban rests between his
shoulder blades, his brow is corrugated with perplexity, his mouth a
little open, as if his lower jaw could not quite follow the rest of
his upturned face.  Hurree cannot know much about toothache.  What
would I not give for that set of incisors, regular as the teeth of a
saw, and all as red as a fresh brick!  I suppose the current quid of
pan suparee is temporarily stowed away under that swelling in the
left cheek, where the fierce black patch of whisker grows.  The
survival of a partial cheek pouch in some branches of the human race
is a point that escaped Darwin.  But I am digressing into
reflections.  To return:  a lady is standing over the quadruped and
evidently expressing serious displeasure in some form of that
domestic language which we call Hindoostanee, with variations.  The
charge she lays against him seems to be that he has, in disregard of
explicit instructions and defiance of common sense, made a blunder to
which her whole past experience in India furnishes no parallel, and
which has resulted in the total destruction of a whole piece of
costly material, and the wreck of a garment for want of which the
saheb (that is myself) will be put to a degree of inconvenience which
cannot be estimated in rupees, and will most certainly be provoked to
an outbreak of indignation too terrible to be described.  So little
do we know ourselves!  I had no idea I harboured such a temper.
However, Hurree does not tremble, but pleads that it was necessary to
make the garment "leetle silope," and though he admits that the slope
is too great, he thinks the mistake can be remedied, and is pulling
the cloth to see if it will not stretch to the required shape.
Failing this, he has other remedies of a technical kind to suggest.
I do not understand these matters, and cannot interpret his argument,
but he puts his fingers on the floor and flings himself lightly to
the other side of the cloth, to point out where he proposes to have a
"fals hame," or some other device.  She rejects the proposal with
scorn, and again impresses him with the consequences of his wicked
blunder.  At last I am glad to see that a compromise is effected, and
the little man settles himself in the middle of a small carpet and
locks his legs together so that his shins form an X and he sits on
his feet.  In this position he will ply his needle for the rest of
the day at a rate inversely proportional to the distance of his
mistress.  When she retires for her afternoon siesta the needle will
nap too.  Then he will take out a little Vade Mecum, which is never
absent from his waistband, and unroll it.  It is many-coloured and
contains little pockets, one for fragments of the spicy areca, one
for the small tin box which contains fresh lime, one for cloves, one
for cardamoms, and so on.  He will put a little of this and a little
of that into his palm, then roll them all up in a betel leaf out of
another pocket, and push the parcel into his mouth.  Thus refreshed
he will go to work again, not, however, upon the garment to which he
is now devoted, but upon a roll of coloured stuffs on which he is at
the present moment sitting.  You see, times are hard and Hurree has a
large family, so he is obliged to eke out his salary by contract work
for the mussaul.  His work suffers from other interruptions.  When
the carriage of a visitor is heard, he has to awaken the chupprassee
on duty at the door, and on his own account he goes out to drink
water at least as often as the chupprassee himself.  As the day draws
near its close, he watches the shadow like a hireling, and when it
touches the foot of the long arm chair, he springs to his feet, rolls
up his rags and threads into a bundle, and trips gaily out.  As he
does so you will observe that his legs are bandy, the knees refusing
to approach each other.  This is the result of the position in which
he spends his days.

This is how we clothe ourselves in our Indian empire.  Our smooth and
comfortable khakee suits, our ample pyjamas, the cool white jackets
in which we dine, in this way are they brought about.  But you must
not allow yourself to think of the Dirzee simply as an agency for
producing clothes.  Life is not made up of such simplicities.  The
raison d'etre of that mango tree lies without doubt in the chalice of
nectar, called "mango fool," with which Domingo appeases me when he
guesses that his enormities have gone beyond the limits even of my
endurance; but I see that thirty-seven candidates for the place of
the chupprassee who went on leave yesterday have encamped under its
shade, that they may watch for my face in the verandah.  The
trespassing goat also has browsed on its leaves, and from the shelter
of its branches the Magpie Robin pours that stream of song which,
just before the dawning of the day, in the cloudy border land between
sleeping and waking flows over my soul.  But I shall never really
know the place that tree has filled in my life, unless someone cuts
it down and gives me a full view, from my easy chair, of the dirty
brick-burners' hut, with the poisonous film of blue smoke playing
over the kiln, and the family of pariah puppies below, sporting with
the sun-dried remains of a fowl, which deceased in my yard and was
purloined by their gaunt mother.  Now let imagination blot out the
Dirzee.  Remove him from the verandah.  Take up his carpet and sweep
away the litter.  What a strange void there is in the place!
Eliminate him from a lady's day.  Let nine o'clock strike, but bring
no stealthy footstep to the door, no muffled voice making respectful
application for his Kam.  From nine to ten breakfast will fill the
breach, and you may allow another hour for the butler's account and
the godown; but there is still a yawning chasm of at least two hours
between eleven and tiffin.  I cannot bridge it.  Imagination strikes
work.  The joyful sound of the Borah's voice brings promise of
relief; but no! for what interest can there be in the Borah if you
have no Dirzee?  In the spirit of fair play, however, I must mention
that my wife does not endorse all this.  On the contrary, she tells
me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is "rank bosh."  She
declares that the Dirzee is the bane of her life, that he is worse
than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes
but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, or
mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that every evening for the
last month he has watched her getting ready for to drive, and just as
her foot was on the carriage step, has reminded her, with a cough,
that his work was finished and he had nothing to do.  If she could
only do without him, she would send him about his business and be the
happiest woman in the world, for she could devote the whole day to
music and painting and the improvement of her mind.  Of course I
assent.  That is a very commendable way of thinking about the matter.
But, as an amateur philosopher, I warn you never to let yourself get
under practical bondage to such notions.  I tell you when you betake
yourself to music or painting, carpentry or gardening, as a means of
getting through the day, you are sapping your mental constitution and
shortening your life:  unless you are sustained by more than ordinary
littleness of mind you will never see threescore and ten.  All these
things are good in proportion as you have difficulty in finding time
for them.  When you have to rise early in the morning and work hard
to make a little leisure for your favourite hobby, then you are
getting its blessing.  Now, the Dirzee is not a means of killing
time.  On the contrary, I see that he compels his mistress to take
thought how she may save time alive, if she wishes to get anything
done.  He hurries the day along and scatters its hours, so that ennui
cannot find an empty minute to lurk in.  I do not deny that he is the
occasion of a few provocations, and the simile of the fly is just;
but are not provocations an element in the interest of every pursuit,
the pepper which flavours all pleasant occupation?  I collect
butterflies, and my friends think I am a man to be envied because I
have such a taste.  Do they suppose a butterfly catcher has no
provocations?  Was it seventeen or seventy times (I forget) in one
page that I laid down my pen, put off my spectacles and caught up my
net to rush after that brute of a Papilio polymnestor, who just came
to the duranta flowers to flout me and skip over the wall into the
next garden?  And does anyone but a butterfly hunter know how it
feels to open your cabinet drawers just a few hours after the ants
have got the news that the camphor is done?  Does anyone but an
entomologist know the grub of Dermestes intolerabilis?  Why should a
collection of butterflies be called an object of perennial interest
and delight, and the Dirzee an unmitigated provocation?  They are
both of one family.  Nothing is unmitigated in this world.

Maria Graham tells us that in her time "the Dirdjees, or tailors, in
Bombay" were "Hindoos of respectable caste," but in these days the
Goanese, who has not capacity to be a butler or cook, becomes a
Dirzee, and in Bombay I have seen Bunniah Dirzees.  Hurree can hold
his own against these, I doubt not, but the advancing tide of
civilization is surely crumbling down his foundations.  It is not
only the "Europe" shop in Bombay that takes the bread out of his
month, but in the smallest and most remote stations, Narayen,
"Tailor, Outfitter, Milliner, and Dressmaker," hangs out his sign-
board, and under it pale, consumptive youths of the Shimpee caste
bend over their work by lamplight, and sing the song of the shirt to
the whirr-rr-rr of sewing machines.  And as Hurree goes by on his way
home, his prophetic soul tells him that his son will not live the
happy and independent life which has fallen to his lot.  But he has a
bulwark still in the dhobie, for the "Tailor and Outfitter" will not
repair frayed cuffs, and the sewing machine cannot put on buttons.
And Hurree is not ungrateful, for I observe that, when the dhobie
delivers up your clothes in a state which requires the Dirzee, the
Dirzee always gives them back in a condition which demands the
dhobie.



THE MALEE



"Another custom is their sitting always on the ground with their
knees up to their chins, which I know not how to account for."--
Daniel Johnson

I have been watching Thomas Otway, gardener.  His coat hangs on a
tree hard by, and he, standing in his shirt sleeves, is slaughtering
regiments of weeds with a long hoe.  When they are all uprooted and
prostrate, he changes his weapon for a fork, with which he tosses
them about and shakes them free of soil and gathers them into heaps.
Then he brings a wheel-barrow, and, piling them into it until it can
hold no more, goes off at a trot.  I am told his only fault is that
he is SLOW.

I have also stood watching Peelajee.  He, too, is a gardener, called
by his own people a Malee, and by us, familiarly, a Molly.  He sits
in an attitude not easy to describe, but familiar to all who have
resided in the otiose East.  You will get at it by sitting on your
own heels and putting your knees into your armpits.  In this position
Peelajee can spend the day with much comfort, which is a wonderful
provision of nature.  At the present moment he also is engaged in the
operation of weeding.  In his right hand is a small species of sickle
called a koorpee, with which he investigates the root of each weed as
a snipe feels in the mud for worms; then with his left hand he pulls
it out, gently shakes the earth off it, and contributes it to a small
heap beside him.  When he has cleared a little space round him, he
moves on like a toad, without lifting himself.  He enlivens his toil
by exchanging remarks upon the weather as affecting the price of
grain, the infirmity of my temper and other topics of personal
interest, with an assistant, whom he persuaded me to engage by the
day, pleading the laborious nature of this work of weeding.  When two
or three square yards have been cleared, they both go away, and
return in half an hour with a very small basket, which one holds
while the other fills it with the weeds.  Then the assistant balances
it on his head, and sets out at one mile an hour for the garden gate,
where he empties it on the roadside.  Then he returns at the same
rate, with the empty basket on his head, to Peelajee, who is occupied
sitting waiting for him.

It is clear that there may be two ways of doing the same thing.  I
have no doubt there is much to be said for both, but, upon the whole,
the advantage seems to lie with the Malee.  Otway does as much work
in a day as Peelajee does in a week.  But why should a day be better
than a week?  If you turn the thing round, and look at the other side
of it, you will find that Otway costs three shillings a day and
Peelajee two rupees a week.  So, if you are in a hurry, you can
employ half a dozen Peelajees, and feel that you are making six
families in the world happy instead of only one.  And I am sure the
calm and peaceful air of Peelajee, as he moves about the garden, must
be good for the soul and promote longevity.  I hate bustle, and I can
vouch for Peelajee that he never bustles.  However, there is no need
of odious comparisons.  There is a time for everything under the sun,
and a place.  Here, in India, we have need of Peelajee.  He is a
necessary part of the machinery by which our exile life is made to be
the graceful thing it often is.  I pass by bungalow after bungalow,
each in its own little paradise, and look upon the green lawn
successfully defying an unkind climate, the islands of mingled
foliage in profuse, confused beauty, the gay flower beds, the clean
gravel paths with their trim borders, the grotto in a shady corner,
where fern and moss mingle, all dripping as if from recent showers
and make you feel cool in spite of all thermometers, and I say to
myself, "Without the Malee all this would not be."  Neither with the
Malee alone would this be, but something very different.  I admit
that.  But is not this just one secret of the beneficent influence he
has on us?  Your "Scotch" gardener is altogether too good.  He
obliterates you--reduces you to a spectator.  But keeping a Malee
draws you out, for he compels you to look after him, and if you are
to look after him, you must know something about his art, and if you
do not know, you must learn.  So we Anglo-Indians are gardeners
almost to a man, and spend many pure, happy hours with the pruning
shears and the budding knife, and this we owe to the Malee.  When I
say you must look after him, I do not disparage his skill; he is neat
handed and knows many things; but his taste is elementary.  He has an
eye for symmetry, and can take delight in squares and circles and
parallel lines; but the more subtle beauties of unsymmetrical figures
and curves which seem to obey no law are hid from him.  He loves
bright tints especially red and yellow, with a boy's love for sugar;
he cannot have too much of them; but he has no organ for perceiving
harmony in colour, and so the want of it does not pain him.  The
chief avenue, however, by which the delights of a gardener's life
reach him is the sense of smell.  He revels in sweet odours; but
here, too, he seeks for strength rather than what we call delicacy.
In short, the enjoyment which he finds in the tones of his native
tom-tom may be taken as typical of all his pleasures.  I find
however, that Peelajee understands the principles of toleration, and,
recognising that he caters for my pleasure rather than his own, is
quite willing to abandon his favourite yellow marigold and luscious
jasmine for the pooteena and the beebeena and the fullax.  But
perhaps you do not know these flowers by their Indian names.  We call
them petunia, verbena, and phlox.  This is, doubtless, another
indication of our Aryan brotherhood.

Peelajee is industrious after the Oriental method--that is to say, he
is always doing something, but is economical of energy rather than
time.  If there are more ways than one of doing a thing, he has an
unerring instinct which guides him to choose the one that costs least
trouble.  He is a fatalist in philosophy, and this helps him too.
For example, when he transplants a rose bush, he saves himself the
trouble of digging very deep by breaking the root, for if the plant
is to live it will live, and if it is to die it will die.  Some
plants live, he remarks, and some plants die.  The second half of
this aphorism is only too true.  In fact, many of my best plants not
only die, but suddenly and entirely disappear.  If I question
Peelajee, he denies that I ever had them, and treats me as a dreamer
of dreams.  I would not be uncharitable, but a little suspicion, like
a mouse, lurks in the crevices of my mind that Peelajee
surreptitiously carries on a small business as a seedsman and nursery
gardener, and I know that in his simple mind he is so identified with
his master that meum and tuum blend, as it were, into one.  I am
restrained from probing into the matter by a sensitiveness about
certain other mysteries which may be bound up with this, and about
which I have always suppressed my curiosity.  For example, where do
the beautiful flowers which decorate my table grow?  Not altogether
in my garden.  So much I know:  more than that I think it prudent not
to know.  For this reason, as I said, I forbear to make close
scrutiny into what may be called the undercurrent of Peelajee's
operations, but I notice that he always has in hand large beds of
cuttings from my best roses and crotons, and these flourish up to a
certain point, after which I lose all trace of them.  He says that an
insidious caterpillar attacks their roots, so that they all grow
black and wither away suddenly.  I fall upon him and tell him that he
is to blame.  He protests that he cannot control underground
caterpillars.  He knows that I suspect, and I suspect that he knows,
but a veil of dissimulation, however transparent, averts a crisis, so
we fence for a time till he understands clearly that, when he
propagates my plants, he must reserve a decent number for me.

Griffins and travelling M.P.s are liable to suppose that the Malee is
a gardener, and ergo that you keep him to attend to your garden.
This is an error.  He is a gardener, of course, but the primary use
of him is to produce flowers for your table, and you need him most
when you have no garden.  A high-class Malee of good family and
connections is quite independent of a garden.  It seems necessary,
however, that your neighbours should have gardens.

The highest branch of the Malee's art is the making of nosegays, from
the little "buttonhole," which is equivalent to a cough on occasions
when baksheesh seems possible, to the great valedictory or Christmas
bouquet.  The manner of making these is as follows.  First you gather
your flowers, cutting the stalks as short as possible, and tie each
one firmly to an artificial stalk of thin bamboo.  Then you select
some large and striking flower for a centre, and range the rest round
it in rings of beautiful colours.  If your bull's eye is a sunflower,
then you may gird it with a broad belt of red roses.  Yellow
marigolds may follow, then another ring of red roses, then lilac
bougainvillea, then something blue, after which you may have a circle
of white jasmine, and so on.  Finally, you fringe the whole with
green leaves, bind it together with pack thread, and tie it to the
end of a short stick.  If the odour of rose, jasmine, chumpa,
oleander, etc., is not sufficient, you can mix a good quantity of
mignonette with the leaves on the outside, but, in any case, it is
best to sprinkle the whole profusely with rose water.  This will make
a bouquet fit to present to a Commissioner.



THE BHEESTEE



The malee has an ally called the Bheestee.  If you ask, Who is the
Bheestee?  I will tell you.  Behisht in the Persian tongue means
Paradise, and a Bihishtee is, therefore, an inhabitant of Paradise, a
cherub, a seraph, an angel of mercy.  He has no wings; the painters
have misconceived him; but his back is bowed down with the burden of
a great goat-skin swollen to bursting with the elixir of life.  He
walks the land when the heaven above him is brass and the earth iron,
when the trees and shrubs are languishing and the last blade of grass
has given up the struggle for life, when the very roses smell only of
dust, and all day long the roaring "dust devils" waltz about the
fields, whirling leaf and grass and corn stalk round and round and up
and away into the regions of the sky; and he unties a leather thong
which chokes the throat of his goat-skin just where the head of the
poor old goat was cut off, and straight-way, with a life-reviving
gurgle, the stream called thunda panee gushes forth, and plant and
shrub lift up their heads and the garden smiles again.  The dust also
on the roads is laid and a grateful incense rises from the ground,
the sides of the water chatty grow dark and moist and cool themselves
in the hot air, and through the dripping interstices of the khuskhus
tattie a chilly fragrance creeps into the room, causing the mercury
in the thermometer to retreat from its proud place.  Nay, the seraph
finds his way to your very bath-room, and discharging a cataract into
the great tub, leaves it heaving like the ocean after a storm.  When
you follow him there, you will thank that nameless poet who gave our
humble Aquarius the title he bears.  Surely in the world there can be
no luxury like an Indian "tub" after a long march, or a morning's
shooting, in the month of May.  I know of none.  Wallace says that to
eat a durian is a new sensation, worth a voyage to the East to
experience.  "A rich, butterlike custard, highly flavoured with
almonds, gives the best general idea of it, but intermingled with it
come wafts of flavour which call to mind cream cheese, onion sauce,
brown sherry, and other incongruities."  If this is true, then eating
a durian must, in its way, be something like having a tub.  That
certainly is a new sensation.  I cannot tell what gives the best
general idea of it, but there are mingled with it many wafts of a
vigorous enjoyment, which touch you, I think, at a higher point in
your nature than cream cheese or onion sauce.  There is first the
enfranchisement of your steaming limbs from gaiter and shooting boot,
buckskin and flannel; then the steeping of your sodden head in the
pellucid depth, with bubaline snortings and expirations of
satisfaction; then, as the first cold stream from the "tinpot"
courses down your spine, what electric thrills start from a dozen
ganglia and flush your whole nervous system with new life!  Finally,
there is the plunge and the wallow and the splash, with a feeling of
kinship to the porpoise in its joy, under the influence of which the
most silent man becomes vocal and makes the walls of the narrow
ghoosulkhana resound with amorous, or patriotic, song.  A flavour of
sadness mingles here, for you must come out at last, but the ample
gaol towel receives you in its warm embrace and a glow of contentment
pervades your frame, which seems like a special preparation for the
soothing touch of cool, clean linen, and white duck, or smooth
khakee.  And even before the voice of the butler is heard at the
door, your olfactory nerves, quickened by the tonic of the tub, have
told you what he is going to say.

Some people in India always bathe in hot water, not for their sins,
but because they like it.  At least, so they say, and it may be true,
for I have been told that you may get a taste even for drinking hot
water if you keep at it long enough.

The Bheestee is the only one of all our servants who never asks for a
rise of pay on account of the increase of his family.  But he is not
like the other servants.  We do not think of him as one of the
household.  We do not know his name, and seldom or never speak to
him; but I follow him about, as you would some little animal, and
observe his ways.  I find that he always stands on his left leg,
which is like an iron gate-post, and props himself with his right.  I
cannot discover whether he straightens out when he goes home at
night, but when visible in the daytime, he is always bowed, either
under the weight of his mussuk or the recollection of it.  The
constant application of that great cold poultice must surely bring on
chronic lumbago, but he does not complain.  I notice, however, that
his waist is always bound about with many folds of unbleached cotton
cloth and other protective gear.  The place to study him to advantage
is the bowrie, or station well, in a little hollow at the foot of a
hill.  Of course there are many wells, but some have a bad reputation
for guineaworm, and some are brackish, and some are jealously guarded
by the Brahmins, who curse the Bheestee if he approaches, and some
are for low caste people.  This well is used by the station
generally, and the water of it is very "sweet."  Any native in the
place will tell you that if you drink of this well you will always
have an appetite for your meals and digest your food.  It is circular
and surrounded by a strong parapet wall, over which, if you peep
cautiously into the dark abyss, you may catch a sight of the wary
tortoise, which shares with a score or so of gigantic frogs the task
of keeping the water "sweet."  It was introduced for the purpose by a
thoughtful Bheestee:  the frogs fell in.  Wild pigeons have their
nests in holes in the sides of the well.  Here, morning and evening,
you will find the Bheestees of the station congregated, some coming
and some going, like bees at the mouth of a hive, but most standing
on the wall and letting down their leather buckets into the water.
As they begin to haul these up again hand over hand, you will look to
see them all topple head foremost into the well, but they do not as a
rule.  It makes an imaginative European giddy to look down into that
Tartarean depth; but then the Bheestee is not imaginative.  As the
hot season advances, the water retreats further and further into the
bowels of the earth, and the labour of filling the mussuk becomes
more and more arduous.  At the same time, the demand for water
increases, for man is thirsty and the ground parched.  So the toils
of the poor Bheestee march pari passu with the tyranny of the
climate, and he grows thin and very black.  Then, with the rain, his
vacation begins.  Happy man if his master does not cut his pay down
on the ground that he has little to do.  We masters sometimes do that
kind of thing.

I believe the mussuk bearer is the true and original Bheestee, but in
many places, as wealth and luxury have spread, he has emancipated his
own back and laid his burden on the patient bullock, which walks
sagaciously before him, and stops at the word of command beside each
flower-pot or bush.  He treats his slave kindly, hanging little bells
and cowries about its neck.  If it is refractory he does not beat it,
but gently reviles its female ancestors.  I like the Bheestee and
respect him.  As a man, he is temperate and contented, eating bajree
bread and slacking his thirst with his own element.  The author of
Hobson Jobson says he never saw a drunken Bheestee.  And as a servant
he is laborious and faithful, rarely shirking his work, seeking it
out rather.  For example, we had a bottle-shaped filter of porous
stoneware, standing in a bucket of water, which it was his duty to
fill daily; but the good man, not content with doing his bare duty,
took the plug out of the filter and filled it too!  And all the
station knows how assiduously he fills the rain gauge.  But what I
like best in him is his love of nature.  He keeps a tame lark in a
very small cage, covered with dark cloth that it may sing, and early
in the morning you will find him in the fields, catching grasshoppers
for his little pet.  I am speaking of a Mahomedan Bheestee.  You must
not expect love of nature in a Hindoo.



TOM, THE BARBER



In India it is not good form to shave yourself.  You ought to respect
the religious prejudices and social institutions of the people.  If
everyone shaved himself, how would the Barber's stomach be filled?
The pious feeling which prompts this question lies deep in the heart
of Hindoo society.  We do not understand it.  How can we, with our
cold-blooded creed of demand and supply, free trade and competition,
fair field and no favour?  In this ancient land, whose social system
is not a deformed growth, but a finished structure, nothing has been
left to chance, least of all a man's beard; for, cleanliness and
godliness not being neighbours here, a beard well matted with ashes
and grease is the outward and visible sign of sanctity.  And so, in
the golden age, when men did everything that is wise and right, there
was established a caste whose office it was to remove that sign from
secular chins.  How impious and revolutionary then must it be for a
man who is not a barber to tamper with his own beard, thus taking the
bread out of the mouths of barbers born, and blaspheming the wisdom
of the ancient founders of civilization!  It is true that, during the
barbers' strike a few years ago, the Brahmins, even of orthodox
Poona, consecrated a few of their own number to the use of the razor.
But desperate diseases demand desperate remedies.  When the barbers
struck, Nature did not strike.  Beards grew as before, and threatened
to change the whole face of society.  In view of such an appalling
crisis who would say anything was unlawful?  Besides, British rule is
surely undermining the very foundations of society, and I doubt if
you could find a Brahmin to-day under fifty years of age whose heart
is not more or less corroded by the spirit of change.  Your young
University man is simply honey-combed:  he can scarcely conceal his
mind from his own mother or wife.

But I must return to the Barber.  The natives call him hujjam.  He
has been bred so true for a score or so of centuries that shaving
must be an instinct with him now.  His right hand is as delicate an
organ as a foxhound's nose.  I believe that, when inebriated, he goes
on shaving, just as a toad deprived of its brain will walk and eat
and scratch its nose.  If you put a jagged piece of tin into the hand
of a baby hujjam, he will scrape his little sister's face with it.
In India, as you know, every caste has its own "points," and you can
distinguish a Barber as easily as a dhobie or a Dorking hen.  He is a
sleek, fair-complexioned man, dressed in white, with an ample red
turban, somewhat oval in shape, like a sugared almond.  He wears
large gold earrings in the upper part of his ears, and has a sort of
false stomach, which, at a distance, gives him an aldermanic figure,
but proves, on a nearer view, to be made of leather, and to have many
compartments, filled with razors, scissors, soap, brush, comb,
mirror, tweezers, earpicks, and other instruments of a more or less
surgical character; for he is, indeed, a surgeon, and especially an
aurist and narist.  When he takes a Hindoo head into his charge, he
does not confine himself to the chin or scalp, but renovates it all
over.  The happy patient enjoys the operation, sitting proudly in a
public place.  When a Barber devotes himself to European heads he
rises in the social scale.  If he has any real talent for his
profession, he soon rises to the rank and title of Tom, and may
eventually be presented with a small hot-water jug, bearing an
inscription to the effect that it is a token of the respect and
esteem in which he was held by the officers of the ---th Regiment at
the station of Daree-nai-hona.  This is equivalent to a C. I. E., but
is earned by merit.  In truth, Tom is a great institution.  He opens
the day along with tea and hot toast and the Daree-nai-hona
Chronicle, but we throw aside the Chronicle.  It is all very well if
you want to know which band will play at the band-stand this evening,
and the leading columns are occasionally excruciatingly good, when a
literary corporal of the Fusiliers discusses the political horizon,
or unmasks the Herald, pointing out with the most pungent sarcasm how
"our virtuous contemporary puts his hands in his breeches pockets,
like a crocodile, and sheds tears;" but during the parade season the
corporal writes little, and articles by the regular staff, upon the
height to which cantonment hedges should be allowed to grow, are apt
to be dull.  For news we depend on Tom.  He appears reticent at
first, but be patient.  Let him put the soap on, and then tap him
gently.

"Well, Tom, what news this morning?"

"No news, sar."  After a long pause, "Commissioner Saheb coming to-
morrow."

"To-morrow?  No, he is not coming for three weeks."

"To-morrow coming.  Not telling anybody; quietly coming."

"Why?"

"God knows."  After another pause, "Nana Shett give Mamletdar 500
rupee for not send his son to prison.  Then Nana Shett's brother he
fight with Nana Shett, so he write letter to Commissioner and tell
him you come quietly and make inquire."

"The Mamletdar has been taking bribes, has he?"

"Everybody taking.  Fouzdar take 200 rupee.  Dipooty take 500 rupee."

"What!  Does the Deputy Collector take bribes?"

"God knows.  Black man very bad.  All black man same like bad."

"Then are you not a black man?"

Tom smiles pleasantly and makes a fresh start.

"Colonel Saheb's madam got baby."

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

"Girl, sar.  Colonel Saheb very angry."

"Why?"

"He say, 'I want boy.  Why always girl coming?'  Get very angry.
Beat butler with stick."

Yes, Tom is a great institution.  Who can estimate how much we owe to
him for the circulation of that lively interest in one another's
well-being which characterises the little station?  Tom comes, like
the Pundit, in the morning, but he is different from the Pundit and
we welcome him.  He is not a shadow of the black examination-cloud
which lowers over us.  There is no flavour of grammars and
dictionaries about him.  Even if he finds you still in bed,
conscience gets no support from him.  He does not awaken you, but
slips in with noiseless tread, lifts the mosquito curtains, proceeds
with his duty and departs, leaving no token but a gentle dream about
the cat which came and licked your cheeks and chin with its soft,
warm tongue, and scratched you playfully with its claws, while a cold
frog, embracing your nose, looked on and smiled a froggy smile.  The
barber's hand IS cold and clammy.  Chacun a son gout.  I do not like
him.  I grow my beard, and Tom looks at me as the Chaplain regards
dissenters.



OUR "NOWKERS"--THE MARCH PAST



Now it is time to close our inspection and order a march past.  I
think I have marshalled the whole force.  It may seem a small band to
you, if you have lived in imperial Bengal, for we of Bombay do not
generally keep a special attendant to fill and light our pipe, and
our tatoo does not require a man to cut its grass.  Some of us even
put on our own clothes.  In short, we have not carried the art of
living to such oriental perfection as prevails on the other side of
India, and a man of simple tastes will find my company of fourteen a
sufficient staff.  There they are, Sub hazir hai, "they are all
present," the butler says, except one humble, but necessary officer,
who does not like to appear.  He is known familiarly by many names.
You may call him Plantagenet, for his emblem is the lowly broom; but
since his modesty keeps him in the background, we will leave him
there.  The rest are before you, the faithful corps with whose help
we transact our exile life.  You may look at them from many
standpoints, and how much depends on which you take!  I suspect the
commonest with us masters is that which regards boy, butler, mussaul,
cook, as just so many synonyms for channels by which the hard-earned
rupee, which is our life-blood, flows from us continually.  This view
puts enmity between us and them, between our interests and theirs.
It does not come into our minds, that when we submit our claim for an
extra allowance of Rs. 200 under section 1735 of the Code, and the
mussaul gets the butler to prefer a humble request for an increase of
one rupee a month to his slender puggar, we and the mussaul are made
kin by that one touch of nature.  We spurn the request and urge the
claim, with equal wonderment at the effrontery of mussauls and the
meanness of Governments.  And "the angels weep."

Shift your standpoint, and in each cringing menial you will see a
black token of that Asiatic metamorphosis through which we all have
passed.  What a picture!  Look at yourself as you stand there in
purple sublimity, trailing clouds of darkness from the middle ages
whence you come, planting your imperial foot on all the manly
traditions of your own free country, and pleased with the grovelling
adulations of your trembling serfs.  And now it is not the angels who
weep, but the Baboo of Bengal.  His pale and earnest brow is furrowed
with despair as he turns from you.  For whither shall he turn?  When
his bosom palpitates with the intense joy of newborn aspirations for
liberty, to whom shall he go if the Briton, the champion of the
world's freedom, has drunk of Comus's cup and become an oriental
satrap?  Ah! there is still hope.  The "large heart of England" beats
still for him.  In the land of John Hampden and Labouchere there are
thousands yet untainted by the plague, who keep no servant, who will
listen to the Baboo while he tells them about you, and perhaps return
him to parliament.

There is a third view of the case, fraught with much content to those
who can take it, and, happily, it is the only view possible to the
primitive intelligences over which we exercise domestic lordship.  In
this view they are, indeed, as we regard them--so many channels by
which the rupee may flow from us; but what are we, if not great
reservoirs, built to feed those very channels?  And so, with that
"sweet reasonableness" which is so pleasant a feature of the Hindoo
mind, your boy or butler, being the main conduit, sets himself to
estimate the capacity of the reservoir, that he may adapt the gauge
of each pipe and regulate the flow.  And, as the reservoir grows
greater, as the assistant becomes a collector and the collector a
commissioner, the pipes are extended and enlarged, and all rejoice
together.  The moral beauty of this view of the situation grows upon
you as you accustom your mind to dwell on it.  Is it not pleasant to
think of yourself as a beneficent irrigation work, watering a wide
expanse of green pasture and smiling corn, or as a well in a happy
garden, diffusing life and bloom?  Look at the syce's children.  Phil
Robinson says there are nine of them, all about the same age and
dressed in the same nakedness.  As they squat together there,
indulging "the first and purest of our instincts" in the mud or dust
of the narrow back road, reflect that their tender roots are
nourished by a thin rivulet of rupees which flows from you.  If you
dried up, they would droop and perhaps die.  The butler has a bright
little boy, who goes to school every day in a red velvet cap and
print jacket, with a small slate in his hand, and hopes one day to
climb higher in the word than his father.  His tendrils are wrapped
about your salary.  Nay, you may widen the range of your thoughts:
the old hut in the environs of Surat, with its patch of field and the
giant gourds, acknowledges you, and a small stream, diverted from one
of the channels which you supply, is filling a deep cistern in one of
the back streets of Goa.  Pardon me if I think that the untutored
Indian's thought is better even for us than any which we have framed
for ourselves.  Imagine yourself as a sportsman, spear in hand,
pursuing the wild V.C. through fire and water, or patiently stalking
the wary K.C.B., or laying snares for the gentle C.I.E.; or else as a
humble industrious dormouse lining a warm nest for the winter of your
life in Bath or Tunbridge Wells; or as a gay butterfly flitting from
flower to flower while the sunshine of your brief day may last; or
simply as a prisoner toiling at the treadmill because you must:  the
well in the garden is a pleasanter conception than all these and
wholesomer.  Foster it while you may.  Now that India has wakened up
and begun to spin after the rest of the great world down the ringing
grooves of change, these tints of dawn will soon fade away, and in
the light of noon the instructed Aryan will learn to see and deplore
the monstrous inequalities in the distribution of wealth.  He will
come to understand the essential equality of all men, and the real
nature of the contract which subsists between master and servant.
Yes, I am afraid the day is fast drawing near when you will no longer
venture to cut the hamal's pay for letting mosquitoes into your bed
curtains and he will no longer join his palms and call you his father
and mother for doing so.  What a splendid capacity for obedience
there is in this ancient people!  And our relations with them have
certainly taught us again how to govern, which is one of the
forgotten arts in the West.  Where in the world to-day is there a
land so governed as this Indian Empire?

And now each man wants his "character" before he makes his last
salaam, and what shall I say?  "The bearer --- has been in my service
since --- and I have always found him --- "  So far good; but what
next?  Honest?--Yes.  Willing?--Certainly.  Careful?--Very.
Hardworking?--Well, I have often told him that he was a lazy
scoundrel, and that he might easily take a lesson in activity from
the bheestee's bullock, and perhaps I spoke the truth.  But, after
all, he gets up in the morning an hour before me, and eats his dinner
after I have retired for the night.  He gets no Saturday half-
holiday, and my Sabbath is to him as the other days of the week.  And
so the hard things I have said of him and to him are forgotten, and
charity triumphs at the last.  And when my furlough is over and I
return to these shores, the whole troop will be at the Apollo Bunder,
waiting to welcome back their old master and eat his salt again.



POSTSCRIPT.  THE GOWLEE, OR DOODWALLAH



Gopal, the Gowlee, haunts me in my dreams, complaining that he has
been left out in the cold.  I had classed him with the borah and the
baker, as outsiders with whom I had merely business relations; but
Gopal seems to urge that he is not on the same footing with these.
How can he be compared to a mercenary borah?  Has he not ministered
to my wants, morning and evening, in wet weather and dry?  Have not
my children grown up on his milk?  He will not deny that they have
eaten the baker's bread too; but who is the baker?  Does he come into
the saheb's presence in person as Gopal does?  No.  He sits in his
shop and sends a servant.  Not so Gopal.  He is one of my children,
and I am his father and mother.  And I am forced to admit there is
some truth in this view of the case.  The ill-favoured man who haunts
my house of a morning, with a large basket of loaves poised slantwise
on his head, and converses in a strange nasal brogue with the cook,
is not Mr. de Souza, "baker of superior first and second sort bread,
and manufacturer of every kind of biscuit, cake," &c., but a mere
underling.  My intercourse with the head of the firm is confined to
the first day of each month, when he waits on me in person, dressed
in a smart black jacket, and presents his bill.  Also on Good Friday
he sends me a cake and his compliments, but the former, if it is not
intercepted by the butler and applied to his own uses, is generally
too unctuous for my taste.  Very different are our relations with the
Doodwallah.  Our chota hazree waits for him in the morning; our
afternoon tea cannot proceed till he comes; the baby cries if the
Doodwallah is late.  And even if you are one of the few who strike
for independence and keep their own cow, I still counsel you to
maintain amicable relations with the Doodwallah.  One day the cow
will kick and refuse to be milked, and the butler will come to you
with a troubled countenance.  It is a grave case and demands
professional skill.  The Doodwallah must be sent for to milk the cow.
In many other ways, too, we are made to feel our dependence on him.
I believe we rarely die of cholera, or typhoid fever, without his
unobtrusive assistance.  And all his services are performed in
person, not through any underling.  That stately man who walks up the
garden path morning and evening, erect as a betel-nut palm, with a
tiara of graduated milk-pots on his head, and driving a snorting
buffalo before him, is Gopal himself.  Scarcely any other figure in
the compound impresses me in the same way as his.  It is altogether
Eastern in its simple dignity, and symbolically it is eloquent.  The
buffalo represents absolute milk and the lessening pyramid of brass
lotas, from the great two-gallon vessel at the base to the 0.25-seer
measure at the top, stand for successive degrees of dilution with
that pure element which runs in the roadside ditches after rain.
Thus his insignia interpret themselves to me.  Gopal does not
acknowledge my heraldry, but explains that the lowest lota contains
butter milk--that is to say, milk for making butter.  The second
contains milk which is excellent for drinking, but will not yield
butter; the third a cheaper quality of milk for puddings, and so on.
If you are an anxious mother, or a fastidious bachelor, and none of
these will please you, then he brings the buffalo to the door and
milks it in your presence.  I think the truth which underlies the two
ways of putting the thing is the same:  Gopal and I differ in form of
words only.  However that may be, practice is more than theory, and I
stipulate for milk for all purposes from the lowest lota--that is,
milk which is warranted to yield butter.  If it will not stand that
test, I reject it.  Gopal wonders at my extravagance, but consents.
The milk is good and the butter from it plentiful.  But as time goes
on the latter declines both in quantity and quality, so gradually
that suspicion is scarcely awakened.  When at last you summon the
butler to a consultation, he suggests that the weather has been too
hot for successful butter making, or too cold.  If these reasons do
not satisfy you, he has others; if they fail, he gives his verdict
against the Doodwallah.  Next morning Gopal is called to superintend
the making of the butter and convicted, convicted but not abashed.
He expresses the greatest regret, but blames the buffalo; its calf is
too old.  To-morrow you shall have the produce of another buffalo.
So next day you have the satisfaction of seeing a fine healthy pat of
butter swimming in the butter dish, carved and curled with all the
butler's art, like a full-blown dahlia.  But the milk in your tea
does not improve, for Gopal, after ascertaining how much milk you set
aside for butter every day, finds that the new buffalo yields only
that quantity, and so what you require for other purposes comes from
another source.  The butler forgot to tell you this.  What bond is
there between him and honest Gopal?  I cannot tell.  Many are the
mysteries of housekeeping in India, and puzzling its problems.  If
you could behead your butler when anything went wrong, I have very
little doubt everything would go right, but the complicated methods
of modern justice are no match for the subtleties of Indian petty
wickedness.  And yet under this crust of cunning there is a vein of
simple stupidity which constantly crops up where you least expect it.
I remember a gentleman, a bachelor, who set before himself a very
high standard.  He would be strictly just and justly strict.  He
suspected that his milk was watered, but his faithful boy protested
that this could not be, as the milking was begun and finished in his
presence.  So the master provided himself with a lactometer, and the
suspicion became certainty.  Summoning his boy into his presence, he
explained to him that that little instrument, which he saw floating
in the so-called milk before him, could neither lie nor be deceived.
"It declares," he added sternly, "that there is twenty-five per cent.
of water in this milk."  "Your lordship speaks the truth," answered
the faithful man, "but how could I tell a lie?  The milk was drawn in
my presence."  "Do you mean to say you were there the whole time the
animal was being milked?"  "The whole time, your lordship.  Would I
give those rogues the chance of watering the saheb's milk?"  The
master thought for a moment, and asked again, "Are you sure there was
no water in the pail before the milking began?--these people are very
cunning."  "They are as cunning as sheitan, your lordship, but I made
the man turn the pail upside down and shake it."  Again the master
turned the matter over in his just mind, and it occurred to him that
the lactometer was of English manufacture and might be puzzled by the
milk of the buffalo.  "Is this cow's milk, or buffalo's?" he asked.
The boy was beginning to feel his position uncomfortable and caught
at this chance of escape.  "Ah! that I cannot tell.  It may be
buffalo's milk."  Tableau.

I have spoken of having butter made in the house, but Gopal carries
on all departments of a dairyman's business, and you may buy butter
of him at two annas a "cope."  Let philologists settle the derivation
of the word.  The "cope" is a measure like a small tea-cup, and when
Gopal has filled it, he presses the butter well down with his hand,
so that a man skilled in palmistry may read the honest milkman's
fortune off any cope of his butter.  How he makes it, or of what
materials, I dare not say.  Many flavours mingle in it, some familiar
enough, some unknown to me.  Its texture varies too.  Sometimes it is
pasty, sometimes semi-fluid, sometimes sticky, following the knife.
In colour it is bluish-white, unless dyed.  All things considered, I
refuse Gopal's butter, and have mine made at home.  The process is
very simple, and no churn is needed.  Every morning the milk for next
day's butter is put into a large flat dish, to stand for twenty-four
hours, at the end of which time, if the dish is as dirty as it should
be, the milk has curdled.  Then, with a tin spoon, Mukkun skims off
the cream and puts it into a large pickle bottle, and squatting on
the ground, more suo, bumps the bottle upon a pad until the butter is
made.  The artistic work of preparing it for presentation remains.
First it is dyed yellow with a certain seed, that it may please the
saheb's taste, for buffalo butter is quite white, and you know it is
an axiom in India that cow's milk does not yield butter.  Then Mukkun
takes a little bamboo instrument and patiently works the butter into
a "flower" and sends it to breakfast floating in cold water.

Gopal is a man of substance, owning many buffaloes and immensely fat
Guzerat cows, with prodigious humps and large pendent ears.  His
family, having been connected for many generations with the sacred
animal, he enjoys a certain consciousness of moral respectability,
like a man whose uncles are deans or canons.  In my mind, he is
always associated rather with his buffaloes, those great, unwieldy,
hairless, slate-coloured docile, intelligent antediluvians.



THE MISCELLANEOUS WALLAHS



I have yielded to the claim of the doodwallah to be reckoned among
the nowkers.  His right is more than doubtful, and I will yield no
further.  Nevertheless, there is a cluster of petty dependents, a
nebula of minor satellites, which have us for the focus of their
orbit, and which cannot be left out of a comprehensive account of our
system.  Whence, for example, is that raucus stridulation which sets
every tooth on edge and sends a rheumatic shiver up my spine?  "It is
only the Kalai-wallah," says the boy, and points to a muscular black
man, very nearly in the garb of a Grecian athlete, standing with both
feet in one of my largest cooking pots.  He grasps a post with both
hands, and swings his whole frame fiercely from side to side with a
circular motion, like the balance wheel of a watch.  He seems to have
a rough cloth and sand under his feet, so I suppose this is only his
energetic way of scouring the pot preparatory to tinning it, for the
Kalai-wallah is the "tin-man," whose beneficent office it is to avert
death by verdigris and salts of copper from you and your family.  His
assistant, a semi-nude, fleshless youth, has already extemporized a
furnace of clay in the ground hard by, and is working a huge pair of
clumsy bellows.  Around him are all manner of copper kitchen
utensils, handies, or deckshies, kettles, frying-pans, and what not,
and there are also on the ground some rings of kalai, commonly called
tin; but pure tin is an expensive metal, and I do not think it is any
part of the Kalai-wallah's care to see that you are not poisoned with
lead.  One notable peculiarity there is in this Kalai-wallah, or tin-
man, which deserves record, namely, that he pays no dustooree to any
man.  I take it as sufficient evidence of this fact that, though even
the matie could tell you that the pots ought to be tinned once a
month, neither the butler nor the cook ever seems to remember when
the day comes round.  This is a matter which you must see to
personally.  Contrast with this the case of the Nalbund, the clink of
whose hammer in the early morning tells that the 15th of the month
has dawned.  His portable anvil is already in the ground, and he is
hammering the shoes into shape after a fashion; but he is not very
particular about this, for if the shoe does not fit the hoof he can
always cut the hoof to fit the shoe.  This is an advantage which the
maker of shoes for human feet does not enjoy, though I have heard of
very fashionable ladies who secretly have one toe amputated that the
rest may more easily be squeezed into that curious pointed thing,
which, by some mysterious process of mind, is regarded as an elegant
shoe.  But this is by the way.  To return to the Nalbund.  His work
is guaranteed to last one calendar month, and your faithful
ghorawallah, who remembers nothing else, and scarcely knows the day
of the week, bears in mind the exact date on which the horse has to
be shod next, and if the careless Nalbund does not appear, promptly
goes in search of him.  Does not this speak volumes for the
efficiency of that venerable and wonderful institution dustooree, by
which the interests of all classes are cemented together and the
wheels of the social system are oiled?  The shoeing of the bullock is
generally a distinct profession, I believe, from the shoeing of the
horse, and is not considered such a high art.  The poor byle is
thrown, and, his feet being tied together, the assistant holds his
nose to the ground, while the master nails a small slip of bad iron
to each half of the hoof.  I often stop on my way to contemplate this
spectacle, which beautifully illustrates that cold patience, or
natural thick-skinnedness, which fits the byle so admirably for his
lot in this land.  He is yoked to a creaking cart and prodded with a
sharp nail to make him go, his female ancestry reviled to the third
generation, his belly tickled with the driver's toes, and his tail
twisted till the joints crack, but he plods patiently on till he
feels disposed to stop, and then he lies down and takes with an even
mind such cudgelling as the enraged driver can inflict.  At last a
fire of straw is lighted under him, and then he gets up and goes on.
He never grows restive or frets, as a horse would, and so he does not
wear out.  This is the reason why bullocks are used throughout India
for all agricultural purposes.  The horse does not suit the genius of
the people.  I wish horses in India could do without shoes.  In sandy
districts, like Guzerat, they can, and are much better unshod; but in
the stony Deccan some protection is absolutely necessary, and the
poor beast is often at the mercy of the village bullock Nalbund.  It
carries my thoughts to the days of our forefathers, when the
blacksmith was also the dentist.

The Nalbund leads naturally to the Ghasswallah, or grass-man, whose
sign is a mountain of green stuff, which comes nodding in at the back
gate every day upon four emaciated legs.  A small pony's nose
protrudes from the front, with a muzzle on, for in such matters the
spirit of the law of Moses is not current in this country.  The mild
Hindoo does muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn.
His religion forbids him to take life, and he obeys, but he steers as
near to that sin as he can, without actually committing it, and
vitality is seen here at a lower ebb, perhaps, than in any other
country under the sun.  The grassman maintains just so much flesh on
the bones of his beast as will suffice to hold them together under
their burden, and this can be done without lucerne grass, so poor
Tantalus toddles about, buried under a pile of sweet-scented, fresh,
green herbage, ministering to the sleek aristocracy of his own kind,
and returns to gnaw his daily allowance of kurbee.  There is,
however, one alleviation of his lot for which he may well be
thankful, and that is that his burden so encompasses him about that
the stick of his driver cannot get at any part of him.  I believe the
Ghasswallah is an institution peculiar to our presidency--this kind
of Ghasswallah, I mean, who is properly a farmer, owning large well-
irrigated fields of lucerne grass.  Hay is supplied by another kind
of Ghasswallah, who does not keep a pony, but brings the daily
allowance on his head.  That allowance is five polees for each horse.
A polee is a bundle of grass about as thick as a tree, and as long as
a bit of string.  This hay merchant does a large business, and used
to send in a monthly bill to each of his constituents in due form,
thus:-


To Hurree Ganesh,                      January.
   Mr. Esmith, Esquire                      Dr.
   To supplying grass to one horse  Rs.   7 0 0
      Ditto to half a horse               3 8 0
          Total                     Rs.  10 8 0
                      E. E.& contents received.


The half a horse was a cow.

As the monsoon draws to a close and the weather begins to get colder,
a man in a tight brown suit and leather belt, with an unmistakable
flavour of sport about him, presents himself at the door.  This is
the shikaree come with khubber of "ishnap," and quail, and duck, and
in fact of anything you like up to bison and tiger.  But we must
dismiss him to-day.  He would require a chapter to himself, and would
take me over ground quite outside of my present scope.  What a loocha
he is!

What shall I say of the Roteewallah and the Jooteewallah, who comes
round so regularly to keep your boots and shoes in disrepair, and of
all the vociferous tribe of borahs?  There is the Kupprawallah, and
the Boxwallah, and the Ready-made-clotheswallah ("readee made cloes
mem sa-ab! dressin' gown, badee, petticoat, drars, chamees,
everyting, mem sa-ab, very che-eap!") and the Chowchowwallah and the
Maiwawallah or fruit man, with his pleasant basket of pomeloes and
oranges, plantains, red and white, custard apples, guavas, figs,
grapes, and pineapples, and those suspicious-looking old iron scales,
hanging by greasy, knotted strings.  Each of these good people, it
seems, lives in this hard world for no other end but to supply my
wants.  One of them is positive that he supplied my father with the
necessaries of life before I was born.  He is by appearance about
eighteen years of age, but this presents no difficulty, for if it was
not he who ministered to my parent, it was his father, and so he has
not only a personal, but a hereditary claim on me.  He is a
workboxwallah, and is yearning to show his regard for me by
presenting me with a lady's sandalwood dressing-case in return for
the trifling sum of thirty-five rupees.  The sindworkwallah, who has
a similar esteem for me, scorns the thought of wishing to sell, but
if I would just look at some of his beautiful things, he could go
away happy.  When they are all spread upon the ground, then it occurs
to him that I have it in my power to make him lucky for the day by
buying a fancy smoking-cap, which, by-the-by, he brought expressly
for me.  But this subject always makes me sad, for there is no
disguising the fact that the borah is fast passing away for ever, and
with him all the glowing morning tints of that life which we used to
live when India was still India.  But let that regret pass.  One
wallah remains, who presents himself at your door, not monthly, or
weekly, but every day, and often twice a day, and not at the back
verandah, but at the front, walking confidently up to the very easy-
chair on which we stretch our lordly limbs.  And I may safely say
that, of all who claim directly or indirectly to have eaten our salt,
there is not a man for whom we have, one and all of us, a kindlier
feeling.  You may argue that he is only a public servant, and has
really far less claim on us than any of the others; never mind -


"I pray thee, peace.  I will be flesh and blood."


The English mail is in, and we feel, and will feel, towards that red-
livened man as Noah felt towards the dove with the olive branch in
her mouth.  And when Christmas comes round, howsoever we may harden
ourselves against others, scarcely one of us, I know, will grudge a
rupee to the tapalwallah.




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