Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/201

Rh scene or familiar occurrence. You go to the bazaar and enter into conversation with a shopkeeper, turning it upon the interests of the soul when a little company has gathered around you; or, sitting down upon a verandah, you discourse upon your theme, which is in this land always a proper one; or, going out in a bandy, (carriage,) you draw up by the wayside, and calling a passing traveller to you, make him a nucleus around which your congregation will cluster.

It is a bright, balmy morning in January, and the air fans your cheek with a soft, refreshing coolness as you leave your compound. Women, with their robes thrown lightly about them are passing, bearing baskets of vegetables to the market; and men are going to their ablutions on the shore, or to their business. The funeral-pile, where last night a body was burned, now smoulders, and sends up a thin cloud of smoke, while a solitary female watches the spot where some brother or son is returning to ashes. Brahmins, elegant and dainty, pass with their brazen pots to the well, for they cannot use water drawn by any of lower caste; and the buffaloes saunter lazily along to the tank to bathe their ungainly slate-coloured