Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/740

732 uncovered feet would have been a gross breach of propriety. Fine old Hindoo gentlemen, all of the olden time, find it difficult to express their mingled contempt, indignation, and regret for the innovation which substitutes the Cheapside shoe for the ceremonial slipper, or permits the wearing of the latter in a Sahib's office or drawing-room. It shows, they say, that the natives are losing their respect for the Sahibs. And yet the British authorities stupidly sanction it, even set the seal of fashion upon it, by allowing natives of rank, who visit Government House, to appear in the presence of the Governor-General, and the élite of the European society, in their slippers. The fact is, these impious disturbings of the established order of things are most shocking to the well-regulated heathen mind, to which no spectacle can be more monstrous than that of a Hindoo of good caste and old family performing with some arf-and-arf Cockney visitor a duet on the pump-handle, and directly afterward wreathing his apoplectic neck with flowers, and sprinkling his asthmatic waistcoat with rose-water. You see they both back "Young Bengal" in the Barrackpore races.

When Karlee visits his friend the sircar, he is scrupulous not to make his parting salaam until his host has given the customary signal. He waits to be dismissed, or rather to receive permission to withdraw. The etiquette supposes that his inclination is to prolong the enjoyment he derives from the society of so agreeable a gentleman; it is, therefore, not until rose-water has been presented to him, or betel-leaf, or sweetmeats, that he will venture to take his sandals and his leave.

The style of Hindoo politeness is format and imperturbably grave, utterly devoid of heartiness or impulsiveness; and the cordiality which distinguishes the intercourse of American friends appears to the native gentleman boisterous and vulgar. I never saw Karlee laugh; and if I had happened to snatch him from sudden death by fire or water, I think he would have acknowledged the obligation with precisely the same mathematical salaam, or at most the same sententious obsequiousness, with which he accepted a buksheesh of a half-rupee; and yet in both good-humor and gratitude he was as cheerful and as worthy as the most giddy and gushing of damsels. But I must acknowledge there was something truly corpsy in the solemnity with which he would "lay out" a clean shirt. Even so, in the midst of all the jolly uproar of a mess dinner, our Kitmudgars would stand in grim deadliness at our backs, like so many executioners, only waiting for a sign from the ruthless Kousomar, who was just then horribly popping the champagne corks, to behead us,—each his own doomed Sahib.

No wonder Karlee was a gentleman; for the Vishnu Pooran was his Chesterfield, and he had its precepts by heart. "A wise man," he would say to the pert young Kitmudgars, as they bragged and wrangled, between their hubble-bubbles, on the back stairs,—"a wise man will never address another with the least unkindness; but will always speak gently, and with truth, and never make public another's faults. He will never engage in a dispute with either his superiors or his inferiors: controversy and marriage are permitted only between equals. Nor will he ever associate with wicked persons: half an instant is the utmost time he should allow himself to remain in their company. A wise man, when sitting, will not put one foot over the other, nor stretch forth his foot in the presence of a superior; but he will sit with modesty, in the posture styled virasama. Above all, he will not expectorate at the time of eating, offering oblations, or repeating prayers, or in the presence of any respectable person; nor will he ever cross the shadow of a venerable man or of an idol."

For those who imagine that polygamy is a popular institution in Hindostan, the answer of a Hill-man to a Mofussil magistrate should suffice. "Do you keep more than one wife?" "We can hardly feed one; why should