groan for the glaring scandals of the new lights; you'll be marrying widows next, and dining at clubs with fast ensigns."
"Sahib, Caste is God, and Mamoul is his prophet. The church of the Churruck post and the orgies of Hooly are in no danger from beef or Simpkin so long as steak or bottle costs a man his inheritance; and we of Young Bengal know too well how hard are the ways of the Pariah to try them for fun. Caste is God, and Mamoul is his prophet. The 'glad tidings of great joy' your missionaries bring fall upon ears stopped with family pride and the family jewels: you know that appropriate old saw in our proverbial philosophy, 'What is the news of the day to a frog in a well?'—Salaam, Sahib! I have but a few minutes to spare, and the supercargo is waiting with the indigo samples."
Presently, as the Cossitollah panorama flows on beneath our window, with all its bizarreness from the bazaars,—its boxwallahs, and its pawn-makers, its peddlers of toys, its money-changers and shopmen, its basket-makers and mat-weavers and chattah-menders, its perambulating cobblers and tailors, its jugglers, gymnasts, and match-girls,—its fellows who feed on glass bottles for the astonishment and delectation of the Sahibs, or who, if you have such a thing as a sheep about you, will undertake to slaughter and skin it with their teeth and devour it on the spot,—its conjure-wallahs, who, for a few pice, will run sharp foils through each other's bodies without for a moment disturbing either health or cheerfulness, or will make mangoes grow under table-cloths, "all fair and proper," while Master waits,—as the Brahmin still dodges the shadow of the Soodra, and the Soodra spits upon the footprint of the Pariah, the Baboo returns to his chariot; the fat and solemn coachman gathers up the reins, the burkarus assume their symmetrical attitudes on the box, the syces bawl, and the socas jump.
Just now a palkee-gharree, cheapest of one-horse vehicles, with but one half-naked syce running at the pony's head, and never a footman near, passes the spanking Arabs; the plain turban of a respectable accountant in the Honorable Company's coal office at Garden Reach shows between the Venetian slats of the little window, and lo! our fine Baboo steps out of his slippers, and standing barefoot in the common dust of Cossitollah,—dust that has been churned by all the pigs'-feet that ply that promiscuous thoroughfare,—humbly touches first the vulgar ground and then his elegant turban, murmuring a pious Namaskarum; for the respectable accountant in the Honorable Company's coal office is, like Mutty Loll, a Kooleen Brahmin,—only a little more so. Caste is God, and Mamoul is his prophet!
At the gate-lodge of the Baboo's garden-house on the Durumtollah Road, a gray and withered hag, all crippled and leprosied, sits durhna.
What may that be?
Be patient; you shall know.
When the Baboo was as yet a youth, his uncle Rajinda, the pride of the Mullicks, died of cholera, and the administration of the estate devolved upon our free-thinking Kalidas. Of course there were mortgages to foreclose, and delinquent debtors to stir up. A certain small shopkeeper of the China Bazaar was responsible to the concern for a few thousand rupees, wherewith he had been accommodated by Uncle Rajinda as a basis for certain operations in seersuckers and castor-oil, that had yielded no returns. So our Baboo, in a curt chit, (that is, note, or sheet of paper, as near as a Bengalee can come to the word,) bade the small speculator of China Bazaar come down forthwith with the rupees.
But, behold you now, "he had paid," he said. "By the Holy Ganges and the Blessed Cow! by the turban of his father and the veil of his mother! restitution had been made long ago," the old man said; "and the soul of Uncle Rajinda, the pride of the Mullicks, had no reason to
