The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866

The tureen contained delicious Mulligatawney soup, of which, as Karlee well knew, I was inordinately fond; and as he opened the ale he modestly congratulated himself on my vigorous enjoyment of it.

After the soup came curried prawns, a very piquant dish, in eminent repute among the Sahibs, and a famous appetizer. Tonic, hot, and pungent as it is, with spices, betel, and chillies, it is hard to imagine what the torpid livers of the Civil Service would do without their rousing curry.

The curry was followed by a tender bouilli of kid, sauced with a delicate sort of onions stewed in ghee (boiled butter), and flanked with boiled rice, sweet pumpkin, and fried bananas, all served on green leaves. Next came pine-apple, covered with sherry-wine and sugar, in company with English walnuts and cheese; and, last of all, sweetmeats and coffee,—the former a not unpleasant compound of ground rice and sugar with curds and the crushed kernel of the cocoa-nut; the coffee was served in a diminutive gourd, and was not sweetened. Last of the last, the hookah.

And all these wonders had been wrought since the grateful ayah retired with the corals! But then the bazaar was close at hand, and in the sircar's house help was handy.

Whilst I kanahed[22 - Dined.] and smoked, Karlee, humbly "squatting" at my back, allowed me to draw from him all that I have here related of his house and family, and much more that I have not space to relate. Of course, he could not have shared the repast with me,—all the holy water of Ganges could never have washed out so deep a defilement,—but he accompanied my hookah with his hubble-bubble. The reader has observed that, although the viands were choice enough, they were laid on the cheapest pottery, and even on leaves, that the plate from which I ate was of unglazed earthenware, and that the coffee was served in a gourd. This was in order that they might be at once destroyed. By no special dispensation could those vessels ever again be purified for the use of a respectable Hindoo; even a pariah would have felt insulted if he had been asked to eat from them; and if the knives and forks and spoons had not been my own, they must have shared the fate of the platters. But this prejudice must be taken in a Pickwickian sense,—it covered no objection simply personal to the Sahib. In some castes it is forbidden to eat from any plate twice, even in the strictest privacy of the family; and many natives, however wealthy, scrupulously insist upon leaves. All respectable Hindoos lift their food with their fingers, using neither knife, fork, nor spoon; and for this purpose they employ the right hand only, the left being reserved for baser purposes. In drinking water, many of them will not allow the lotah to touch the lips; but, throwing the head back, and holding the vessel at arm's length on high, with an odd expertness they let the water run into their mouths. The sect of Ramanujas obstinately refuse to sit down to a meal while any one is standing by or looking on; nor will they chew betel in company with a man of low caste. Ward has written, "If a European of the highest rank touch the food of a Hindoo of the lowest caste, the latter will instantly throw it away, although he may not have another morsel to allay the pangs of hunger";—but this is true only of certain very strait sects. There are numerous sects that admit proselytes from every caste; but at the same time they will not partake of food, except with those of their own religious party. "Here," says Kerr, "the spirit of sect has supplanted even the spirit of caste,"—as at the temple of Juggernath in Orissa, where the pilgrims of all castes take their khana in common.

At our quarters in Cossitollah even this progressive Karlee will not taste of the food which has been served at our mess-table, though it be returned to the kitchen untouched. But at least he is consistent; for neither will he take medicine from the hand of a Sahib, however ill he may be; nor have I ever known him to decline or postpone the performance of this or that duty because it was Sunday,—as many knavish bhearers do when they have set their hearts on a cock-fight. To compound for sins one is inclined to, by damning those one has no mind to, it is not indispensable that one should be a Christian.

The amiable Mr. James Kerr, of the Hindoo College of Calcutta, has contrived an ingenious and plausible apology for the constitutional (or geographical) laziness of Bengalese servants. He says: "A love of repose may be considered one of the most striking features in the character of the people of India. The Hindoos may be said to have deified this state. Their favorite notion of a Supreme Being is that of one who reposes in himself, in a dream of absolute quiescence. This idea is, doubtless, in the first instance, a reflection of their own character; but, in whatever way it originated, it tends to sanctify in their eyes a state of repose. When removed from this world of care, their highest hope is to become a part of the great Quiescent. It will naturally appear to them the best preparation for the repose of a future life to cultivate repose in this." Therefore, if your kitmudgar, nodding behind your chair, permits his astonished fly-flapper to become a part of the great Quiescent, or if your punka-wallah, having subsided into a comatose beatitude, suddenly invites his compliant machine to repose in himself, in a dream of absolute stagnation, with the thermometer at 120° outside the refrigerator, you must not say, "Damn that boy,—he's asleep again!"—but patiently survey and intelligently admire the spiritual processes by which an exalted sentient force prepares itself for the repose of a future life. But our reckless Karlee took no thought for the everlasting rest into which his soul should enter "when removed from this world of care," according to the ingenious psychological system of the amiable Kerr Sahib; for when he had anything to do, he kept on doing it until it was done, and when he caught the punka-wallah reposing in a dream of absolute quiescence, he bumped his head against the wall, and called him a sooa, and a banchut, and a junglee-wallah.[23 - Pig, sot, and jungle-animal.]

Though possessed of a lively imagination and all his race's sympathy with what is vast, though he saw nothing extravagant in the Hindoo chronology, nor aught that was monstrous in Hindoo mythology, Karlee yet served to illustrate the arguments of those who contend that Hindoos need not necessarily be all boasters, servile liars, and flatterers. He was not forever saying, "Master very wise man; master all time do good; master all time ispeak right." He never told me that my words were pearls and diamonds that I dropped munificently from my mouth. He never called me "your highness," or said I was his father and mother, and the lord of the world; and if I said at noonday, "It is night," he did not exclaim, "Behold the moon and stars!" He never tried to prove to me that the earth revolved on its axis once in twenty-four hours by my favor. "What! dost thou think him a Christian that he would go about to deceive thee?" No, he was as proudly truthful as a Rajpoot, as frank and manly as a Goorkah, and as honest as an up-country Durwan.

Good by, my best of bhearers. To the new baby a good name, and to the faithful ayah enviable enlargement of liver! Khodá rukho ki beebi-ka kulle-jee bhee itui burri hoga![24 - "God grant the lady a substantial liver!"—"the happiness and honors which should follow upon the birth of a male child being figuratively comprehended in that liberality of the liver whence comes the good digestion for which alone life is worth the living."—Child-Life by the Ganges.]—I owe thee for a day of hospitable edifications; and when thou comest to my country, thou shalt find thy Heathen at Home.

A FRIEND

A friend!—It seems a simple boon to crave,—
An easy thing to have.
Yet our world differs somewhat from the days
Of the romancer's lays.
A friend? Why, all are friends in Christian lands.
We smile and clasp the hands
With merry fellows o'er cigars and wine.
We breakfast, walk, and dine
With social men and women. Yes, we are friends;—
And there the music ends!
No close heart-heats,—a cool sweet ice-cream feast,—
Mild thaws, to say the least;—
The faint, slant smile of winter afternoons;—
The inconstant moods of moons,
Sometimes too late, sometimes too early rising,—
But for a night sufficing,
Showing a half-face, clouded, shy, and null,—
Once in a month at full,—
Lending to-night what from the sun they borrow,
Quenched in his light to-morrow.
If thou'rt my friend, show me the life that sleeps
Down in thy spirit's deeps.
Give all thy heart, the thought within thy thought.
Nay, I've already caught
Its meaning in thine eyes, thy tones. What need
Of words? Flowers keep their seed.
I love thee ere thou tellest me "I love."
We both are raised above
The ball-room puppets with their varnished faces,
Whispering dead commonplaces,
Doing their best to dress their lifeless thought
In tinselled phrase worth naught;
Or at the best, throwing a passing spark
Like fire-flies in the dark;—
Not the continuous lamp-light of the soul,
Which, though the seasons roll
Without on tides of ever-varying winds,
The watcher never finds
Flickering in draughts, or dim for lack of oil.
There is a clime, a soil,
Where loves spring up twin-stemmed from mere chance seed
Dropped by a word, a deed.
As travellers toiling through the Alpine snow
See Italy below;—
Down glacier slopes and craggy cliffs and pines
Descend upon the vines,
And meet the welcoming South who half-way up
Lifts her o'erbrimming cup,—

So, blest is he, from peaks of human ice
Lit on this Paradise;—
Who 'mid the jar of tongues hears music sweet;—
Who in some foreign street
Thronged with cold eyes catches a hand, a glance,
That deifies his chance,
That turns the dreary city to a home,
The blank hotel to a dome
Of splendor, while the unsympathizing crowd
Seems with his light endowed.
Many there be who call themselves our friends.
But ah! if Heaven sends
One, only one, the fellow to our soul,
To make our half a whole,
Rich beyond price are we. The millionnaire
Without such boon is bare,
Bare to the skin,—a gilded tavern-sign
Creaking with fitful whine
Beneath chill winds, with none to look at him
Save as a label grim
To the good cheer and company within
His comfortable inn.

THE SINGING-SCHOOL ROMANCE

Father sits at the head of our pew. In old Indian times they say that the male head of the family always took that place, on account of the possible whoops of the savages, who sometimes came down on a congregation like wolves on the fold. It was necessary that the men should be ready to rise at once to defend their families. Whatever the old reason was, the new is sufficient. Men must sit near the pew doors now on account of the hoops of the ladies. The cause is different, the effect is the same.

Father, then, sits at the head of the pew; mother next; Aunt Clara next; next I, and then Jerusha. That has been the arrangement ever since I can remember. Any change in our places would be as fatal to our devotions as the dislodgment of Baron Rothschild from his particular pillar was once to the business of the London Stock Exchange. He could not negotiate if not at his post. We could not worship if not in our precise places. I think, by the fussing and fidgeting which taking seats in the church always causes, that everybody has the same feeling.

It was Sunday afternoon. The good minister, Parson Oliver, had finished his sermon. The text was—well, I can't pretend to remember. Aunt Clara's behavior in meeting, and what she said to us that afternoon, have put the text, sermon, and all out of my head forever. That is no matter; or rather, it is all the better; for when the same sermon comes again, in its triennial round, I shall not recognize an old acquaintance.