Indian dog, however thorough-bred, after a
short residence in the country, and changes his
full-mouthed aristocratic bark into a quick
sharp snarl, or a squeaky whine. Yet he
deserves pity, for his lot is a hard one, and after
a life of abuse and misery, he generally ends
his days in starvation. Flies swarm on all sides.
Their chief resort is the pastrycook's, but they
range from store to store, from store to animal,
from animal to man, in a perpetual dance to
their own monotonous music. The natives do
not seem to mind them, and allow them to
remain on their bodies without attempting to
brush them off. At the upper windows, or on
the roofs of the houses, are women engaged in
household duties. Purchasers and sellers on all
sides seem trying to drown one another's voices,
in the eagerness of their bargaining. Endless
are the lies they indulge in, and wonderful is
the coolness with which they contradict
themselves. They live in an atmosphere of deceit
and over-reaching, and a lie is to them more
natural than the truth. In buying, the rule is
never to give more than two-thirds of the price
demanded. The heaps of mud and rubbish
collected at the side of the road are awaiting
removal in the scavenger's cart. For our village
boasts a municipal committee. And yonder is
the dustman going his morning rounds with
his neat little cart, in the shafts of which is
yoked—a mighty proof of the advance of English
influence—the sacred white Brahmin bull.
Here is the tobacconist's. He himself is seated
among his wares, proving their virtue and
recommending their adoption to all passers-by
who are inclined to believe the evidence of their
own eyes, by smoking his morning pipe. Strings
of hubble-bubbles, and a few hookahs, the latter
of various degrees of elegance and taste, adorn
his shop. Every mouth in the village knows
the taste of a hubble-bubble. Men and women
all smoke; children of four or five years old,
and of both sexes, know how to draw the vapour
through the hole of the cocoa-nut, and can puff
it out of their mouths with the meditative calmness
of an old smoker. Thus we reach the end
of the bazaar. And not too soon, for at its
further end an excited Brahmin bull, as yet a
stranger to our municipal dust-cart, and still
rejoicing in the freedom of his sanctity, is
beginning to run a muck down the crowded
thoroughfare. Tossing up his heels and standing
on his head, as though he were going to
perform a succession of summersaults all down the
street, away he goes, helter-skelter, into the
confectioner's, smashing all his vessels, and
reducing his elegantly devised pastries into a
shapeless mass; while the unfortunate shop-
keeper, not daring to lift his hand against the
sacred animal, views the havoc with dread and
submission, scarce raising his voice to drive the
frolicsome creature away. But away he soon
goes, not caring to surfeit on sugar and flour,
and plunges his head into the first grain
merchant's he reaches. Here he is in a few minutes
secured by some of the most adventurous of the
sufferers, and led away to be let loose in the
fields outside the village.

Some of the houses in the street we have now
entered, are built of brick. The side they
present to the road, with its bare, blank face,
pierced only at a great height from the ground
by a few very small windows, gives but an
unfavourable impression of internal comfort; we
enter the narrow wooden doorway, and find
ourselves in a large, open court-yard. This
court-yard is surrounded by a verandah, behind
which are several rooms, like dens for wild
beasts, to judge from their barred windows and
padlocked doors. Above the verandah are two
or three stories of rooms, both better ventilated
and more accessible to the light and air. The
pillars of the verandah, the frames of the
windows, the walls, perhaps even the court-
yard itself, are decorated with various designs
in bright and gaudy colours. The rooms
contain, with the exception of a few extra beds
and boxes, no more furniture than the ploughman's
hut, though, perchance, the abode of a
man who owns half the village.

Another of the brick houses standing in this
street, and presenting an exterior in all respects
similar, is a temple, wherein rites more mysterious
than edifying are continually being
performed. We pause for a minute within the
doorway; wondering at the hideous idols; at
the dim lights; at the gaudy colouring of the
massive pillars which support the roof; at the
lofty and wide flight of steps ascending to the
shrine; at the atmosphere heavy with incense;
at the heathenish, ignorant pictures; at the
chanting of the priests, sounding like the buzzing
of bagpipes; until we turn, and with a feeling of
relief pass into the pure cool air of the street.
At the corner is another temple: not a mysterious
incense-filled chamber, but an open shrine,
where all passengers can see and worship their
chosen God, in the shape of some hideous idol,
surrounded by floral offerings.

During the middle of the day, and in the
early part of the afternoon, the streets are at
their quietest. Even natives avoid going out
in the heat of the sun, as much as possible.
Trade is now less active. Indeed, with the few
shops situated in this thoroughfare it has
altogether ceased. The drowsy influence of the
heat, and the quiet of the hour, have so affected
yonder confectioner, that a Pariah dog has
caught up one of his patties, and is scampering
away with it as fast as his legs can carry him.
But our banker, that sharp wide-awake man of
business, is by no means under the influence of
the weather, or of anything else but his own
interests, which somehow advance by a rule of
"double interest," a peculiar theorem, not
found in the works of any ancient or modern
arithmetician. He is ready for business, and
looks so hungrily and eagerly after our pockets,
as he squats on his mat in the verandah of his
house, with his ledgers, certain red-covered
books, his tin-boxes, and his large iron-bound
heavily-padlocked chest or safe, that we hurry
past him as if he were an ogre. Another shop-
keeper who has chosen this quiet spot in
preference to the noisy bazaar, is the village book-
seller, who, a learned-looking man with spectacular