Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/162

 other, but it was a pleasure to get him out of the house. In India, amongst so many servants, it is very difficult to discover the thief.

May 31st.—How I rejoice this month is over!—this vile month! It appears almost wicked to abuse the merry merry month of May, so delightful at home, but so hot in India. Mr. M started from Calcutta to come up dāk on the 7th instant, and died in his pālkee of brain-fever only three days afterwards, in consequence of the intense heat! We spare no expense to keep the house cool, and have fourteen men whose sole business night and day is to throw water on tattīs to cool the rooms; unless the wind blows, the tattīs are useless. The heat makes you as sick as if you were to shut your head up in an oven.

A young bullock was standing in the stable to-day by the side of three horses, a snake bit the animal, and it died in a few minutes; the horses escaped,—and so did the snake, much to my sorrow.

July 19th.—The other evening Major P was with us, when Ram Din, a favourite Hindoo servant, brought into the room a piece of cotton cloth containing 150 rupees tightly tied up in it; the man placed it on the table by my side, and retired. Major P, who thought the cloth looked dirty, took it up, and saying, "Oh the vile rupees!" let it drop upon the ground between his chair and mine. We took tea; and I retired to rest, entirely forgetting the bag of rupees. When I looked for it the following morning, of course it had disappeared. By the advice of the jāmadār of the office we sent for a gosāin, a holy personage, who lived in a most remarkable temple on the ruins of an old well by the side of the Jumna, close to our house. The gosāin came. He collected the Hindoos together, and made pooja. Having anointed a sacred piece of wood with oil and turmeric, and placed it in a hut, he closed the door; and coming forth, said: "To show you that I am able to point out the thief, I have now left a gold ring in front of the idol in that house; go in and worship, every man of you. Each man must