ckle
behind him. It is said that many fine fowls of the Brahmin breed, who do
not happen to be Kooleens, complain of the monopoly.

So Karlee had but one wife,--the handy, thrifty ayah already mentioned.
She was nine and he twelve years old when they were betrothed, and they
never saw each other until they were married. A professional
match-maker, or go-between,--female, of course,--was employed by the
parents to negotiate terms and arrange the preliminaries; and when
horoscopes had been compared and the stars found all right, with a
little consequential chaffering, the hymeneal instruments were
"executed." There was no trouble on the score of caste, both families
being soodra; otherwise, the sensitive social balance would have had to
be adjusted by the payment of a sum of money. When the skirts of the
bride and bridegroom had been fastened together with blades of the
sweet-scented cusa grass,--when he had said, "May that heart which is
thine become my heart, and this heart which is mine become thy
heart,"--when, hand in hand, they had stept into the seventh of the
mystic circles,--Mr. and Mrs. Karlee were an accomplished Hindoo fact.

To the parents on both sides, the wedding was a costly performance.
There were the irrepressible and voracious Brahmins to propitiate, the
hungry friends of both families to feast for three days, the musicians
and the nautch-girls and the _tamasha-wallahs_[19] to be bountifully
buksheeshed; and when the bridal palanquin was borne homeward, it was a
high-priced indispensability that the procession should satisfy the best
soodra society,--

"With the yellow torches gleaming,
And the scarlet mantles streaming,
And the canopy above
Swaying as they slowly move."

Karlee has assured me that neither his father nor his father-in-law,
although both were soodras of fair credit and condition, ever quite
recovered from the financial shock of that "awspidges okashn."

A Hindoo very rarely pronounces the name of his wife, even to his most
intimate friends,--to strangers, and especially foreigners, never; on
the part of a native visitor it is the etiquette to ignore her
altogether, and for the husband to allude to her familiarly is an
unpardonable breach of decorum. When, therefore, Karlee, to gratify my
friendly curiosity, led in the happy grandmother, I felt that I was the
recipient of an extraordinary mark of respect and confidence, involving
a generous sacrifice of prejudice.