whether there be a garden or not, many judicious
housekeepers find the advantage of keeping
a gardener, for the sake of a supply of
flowers, which are obtained with much greater
certainty in this manner than if grown at home.
They come, no doubt, from some neighbours'
flower-beds, but the recipients take a leaf from
the rules of government departments, which
always ignore any facts of which they have not
received official notice.

A conveyance of some kind will be one of
your first necessities. If you are a bachelor,
and desire to practise rigorous economy, you
may do without one of your own. A palankeen
—called more generally a palkee—will take you
any short distances you may have to go, and any
long distances too, for that matter; but the
motion is slow, and the jolting is fatiguing, and
most men find it an intolerable nuisance to be
long boxed up in a contrivance unpleasantly
like a coffin. But a palkee is at your
command, if you please, for the small charge of a
rupee a day, and a slight bakhsheesh to the
bearers. Your other economical alternative
will be a hired vehicle, known familiarly as a
"Dumdummer," for the ingenious reason that
it is much in request to take passengers to a
place called Dum-Dum, a few miles from
Calcutta, and a little further off than most people
care to take their own horses. These tlnka
(hired) gharrees may be had for from two to three
rupees a day; but I would not advise anybody
to employ them—the turn-out being as abject a
turn-out as was ever seen on four wheels. The
body of the thing is very much like that of the
dâk gharree, often described; but it is rather
worse as far as springs are concerned, and the
one or two ponies by which it is drawn are half
a dozen degrees more wretched than London
cab-horses. To crown all, the driver is always
half naked, and occasionally three-quarters;
being gratuitously dirty besides, he presents a
more picturesque than polite appearance on the
box. In addition to these drawbacks, he is quite
as extortionate as he dares to be, and if
engaged for the day will get his money in the morning
if he can, when he first sets you down; after
he has got it, you need scarcely take the trouble
to look for him again, unless you wish to
waste your time, as he is probably engaged,
also for the day, to somebody else. A great
many attempts have been made by reformers in
Calcutta to get the public vehicles placed under
proper control (even the price is not regulated
by law, but is merely a matter of custom); but
the indignant correspondents of the newspapers,
and others who ventilate the grievance, are always
told that the laws of supply and demand must
be respected, and that any measures towards
cleanliness, comfort, or safety, in regard to the
gharree-wallahs, would be an interference with
free trade. We do not hear of this objection in
London, where the faults of our cab arrangements
are certainly not owing to the want of
despotic restrictions. But our law-makers in this
country sometimes use cabs themselves, which
our law-makers in Calcutta never do. In the
event of any swindling, you are of course told
that "you have your remedy"—which you
have, to be sure, when you can get it; but the
process is at best difficult and vexatious, and is
seldom worth the trouble involved. A third plan,
available for those who do not keep their own
conveyances, is to hire them at a livery-stable;
but this has its drawbacks, as a carriage and
pair costs sixteen rupees a day, and a buggy and
horse six; and in the latter case, where you
drive yourself, you are exposed to all the chances
incidental to a vicious horse, and the smash, if
not of yourself, at any rate of the vehicle.

If you buy a conveyance of any kind you
must take care that it comes from an European
maker. A native-built vehicle will look very
well at first, but you will soon find that it is
constructed on principles once adopted by the
Chinese in building ships of war upon the
English model: which ships were wonderfully
shipshape in every apparent respect, but would not
swim. A very few days of exposure to the sun
or rain will set a native-built carriage gaping in
all directions; the panels are found so shrunk
or swollen as to have no relation to each other;
the doors will do nothing that doors should
do; the spokes fly out of the wheels at the
first jolting; and the springs are a delusion
after the first week. The iron is rotten and the
wood is green, and nothing is genuine but the
putty and the paint, which cover up all defects.
There are two or three English makers who
have a good reputation, and of one of these you
may get a very fair vehicle—a buggy for six or
seven hundred rupees—a barouche or park
phaeton for a thousand or fifteen hundred; but you
may buy them, nearly as good as new, at
auctions, for considerably less. Your horses will
cost you much the same as in England. The
country horses are far cheaper, but people drive
larger and more pretentious animals in Calcutta
—the Australian or Cape horses being much
affected. A really good well-trained saddle-horse
is always worth a good price, here as in
most other places; but there is an objection to
Australian horses, or "walers," for this reason
that they have an apparently unconquerable
habit of shying at elephants, and camels, of
which latter animals you may meet a string of
a hundred or so anywhere out of the streets of
Calcutta.

There is one advantage attaching to the keeping
of conveyances in Calcutta, which compensates
to a great extent for the original expense.
Once procured, you may keep one going at
comparatively little outlay. The current cost of a
carriage and pair, including the pay of coachman
and two syces, and the keep of the horses, need
not be more than fifty or sixty rupees a month;
the coachman being content with some twelve or
fifteen rupees; the syces with six or seven; the
grass-cutters with four. Your other domestic
servants are paid at similar rates; your khansamah
getting about as much as your coachman;
and the other servants less, in proportion to their
standing and importance.

On the whole, the expenses of a Calcutta