Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/58

42 on their ample, capacious, middle regions. Their version is, that they give that exhilarating exercise to their progeny out of love (the venerable sinners!), but everybody knows it is all a sham. Well, then, one feels while walking the streets of Broach that he is hugging an old welcome friend, as if he were clasped in the arms of old Father Christmas, with a cloak of dust on his shoulders. Dear old hen-pecked Broach!

Yes, the science of henpeckery is carried here to perfection. It is studied universally. The town itself is henpecked by that termagant of a river, the Narbadá; the husbands are henpecked by their better-halves. Even the lower creation share the same fate; the dog, the horse, the bull, are tame as—a Turkish pasha; the other sex, bold, pushing, forward. Nay, even high Government officials do not escape this terrible discipline; their mistress, the Bombay Government, sits heavy on them.

I went a-marketing here, once upon a day, "in the merry month of May"; I approached