Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/108

88 useful callings. They are from more respectable classes of the community, and generally of higher castes, than the pupils in the vernacular or purely Tamil schools. All castes, however, are freely admitted. Here you will find high-caste Sudras, Rajpoots, Mohammedans, and even Brahmins, sitting beside the abhorred and despised Pariah. Many of the boys are both handsome and highly intelligent. Some of the Brahmin boys, especially, are exceedingly engaging in their appearance. They are generally well dressed, wearing either the usual male costume of a cloth around the waist and hanging down below the knees, with another over the shoulders; or the scholar's dress–a long-sleeved white pelisse extending to the knees and covering the inner cloth. On their heads some wear turbans, others high-peaked, starched linen caps that have a very absurd appearance. Their heads are shaven, except a tuft on the crown called the Coodamy. I was not a little amused when two young shavers, not ten years old, gave as an excuse for absence from church on Sunday, that “the barber did not come in time to shave them !"

What, it will be naturally asked, induces these lads thus to come to a Christian school,