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 _elite_ 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