Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/549

Rh on each side of him—one of them, as I was told, shaving the hair from the side of his head, the other just missing his thigh.

Coimbatoor affords a fair specimen of the towns of Southern India. Its streets are regular, many of them narrow and mean, some of them broad, and quite well built, with houses one story in height, but without windows upon the street except here and there a grated aperture for the admission of light to a room not facing on the central court. Each house has in front a small verandah, or piol, of masonry or clay, where the occupants, at least the males, spend much of their time; in the front wall are small triangular niches for lamps. Within the solid wooden door is a small vestibule, leading, in the better class of houses, to the square court in the centre, in which the household duties are carried on by the women. The rooms face upon this court. The furniture of the houses of the poor, and indeed of all who are not rich, is most simple. A mat, rolled up by day and spread upon the hard earth-floor at night, serves for a bed, and the cloth worn by day is all the covering needed at night. A teak-wood box, with polished brass clasps, holds the valuables of the family; and a bench or