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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Behind the Bungalow, by EHA, Illustrated by
+F. C. Macrae
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Behind the Bungalow
+
+
+Author: EHA
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 4, 2015  [eBook #7953]
+[This file was first posted on June 4, 2003]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEHIND THE BUNGALOW***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1897 W. Thacker & Co. by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+              [Picture: Frontispiece, “Behind the Bungalow”]
+
+
+
+
+
+                           BEHIND THE BUNGALOW
+
+
+                                  BY EHA
+                  AUTHOR OF “THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER”
+                       “A NATURALIST ON THE PROWL”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                              Illustrated by
+                               F. C. MACRAE
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                              SIXTH EDITION
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                  LONDON
+                  W. THACKER & CO., 2, CREED LANE, E.C.
+                      CALCUTTA: THACKER, SPINK & CO.
+                                   1897
+
+                         [_All rights reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+[Picture: Pictures of various Indian men] 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 Æneas” 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 _levée_ 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
+Linnæus.  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.
+
+
+[Picture: The boy and man] 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.
+
+                         [Picture: To Matheran!]
+
+
+
+
+THE DOG-BOY.
+
+
+[Picture: A 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 larvæ,
+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, æsthetically,
+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!
+
+                           [Picture: Dog-boys]
+
+
+
+
+THE GHORAWALLA, OR SYCE.
+
+
+[Picture: The Ghorawalla] 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 Crœsus
+provided with such a coin.
+
+                      [Picture: Losing their heads]
+
+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.
+
+                 [Picture: Man and woman with Ghorawalla]
+
+
+
+
+BOOTLAIR SAHEB—_ANGLICÈ_, THE BUTLER.
+
+
+[Picture: The Bootlair saheb] 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.”
+
+                   [Picture: A plot against the butler]
+
+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.
+
+[Picture: Curry and rice] 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.
+
+
+[Picture: 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 _soufflé_ 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.
+
+
+[Picture: The Mussaul] 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!
+
+                          [Picture: More light]
+
+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 fœnore.
+
+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 _à
+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.
+
+                     [Picture: In dread of the devil]
+
+
+
+
+THE HAMAL.
+
+
+[Picture: 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!
+
+                        [Picture: Ooswasty Lukree]
+
+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.
+
+                         [Picture: Purification]
+
+
+
+
+THE BODY-GUARDS.
+
+
+[Picture: The body-guard] 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.
+
+                 [Picture: An unequalled child’s servant]
+
+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.
+
+[Picture: 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!
+
+
+[Picture: The 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 _Væ 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.
+
+                        [Picture: Homeward bound]
+
+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.
+
+                            [Picture: Dhobies]
+
+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.
+
+
+                           [Picture: 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.
+
+[Picture: The Ayah] 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.
+
+
+                          [Picture: 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.
+
+[Picture: Learned repose] 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.
+
+
+[Picture: Hurree] 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.
+
+                       [Picture: A “leelte silope”]
+
+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’être_
+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_.
+
+                          [Picture: The Dirzee]
+
+
+
+
+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_.
+
+[Picture: The Malee] 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.
+
+                   [Picture: The highest style of art]
+
+
+
+
+THE BHEESTEE.
+
+
+[Picture: 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.
+
+                           [Picture: The well]
+
+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.
+
+                        [Picture: His little pet]
+
+
+
+
+TOM, THE BARBER.
+
+
+[Picture: 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.
+
+[Picture: A happy patient] 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.”
+
+[Picture: Tom, the Barber] 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 à 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.
+
+
+                        [Picture: Group of people]
+
+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.
+
+                             [Picture: A cow]
+
+
+
+
+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
+¼-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_.
+
+                    [Picture: The Doodwallahs—Milkmen]
+
+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.
+
+                      [Picture: Home butter making]
+
+
+
+
+THE MISCELLANEOUS WALLAHS.
+
+
+[Picture: The Kalai-wallah] 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.
+
+                            [Picture: Nalbund]
+
+[Picture: Grasswallah] 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   Rs.           7      0           0
+            one horse
+            Ditto to ½ horse                      3      8           0
+            Total                   Rs.          10      8           0
+                                             E. E.& contents received.
+
+The ½ horse was a cow.
+
+[Picture: Shirakee] 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!
+
+[Picture: Ready-made-clothes Wallah] 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.
+[Picture: Sindworkwallah]  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.”
+
+[Picture: Coolie] 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_.
+
+                             [Picture: Finis]
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEHIND THE BUNGALOW***
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