“ On each side are small chocolate-colored heathens, in a sort of short chemises, silver-bangled as to their wrists and ankles, and already with the caste-mark on the foreheads of some of them,--shy, demure younglings, just learning all the awful significance of the word Sahib, who have been brought from mysterious homes by fond ayahs, and smuggled in through back-stairs influence, or boldly introduced by the durwan under the glorifying patronage of that terrible Hastings Clive. ”

“ She chews the chambeli, and hungry Baby, struggling for the "fount," is insulted with apples of Sodom; she swallows a portion of dhallapee, and he is regaled as with the melting melons of Ceylon.
* * * * * Some fine afternoon your ayah takes your little Johnny to stroll by the river's bank,--to watch the green budgerows, as they glide, pulled by singing dandees (so the boatmen of Ganges are called) up to Patna,--to watch the brown corpses, as they float silently down from Benares. At night the ayah returns, wringing her hands. Where is your merry darling? She knows not. ”

“ You are living at one of the up-country stations, where the freer air of the jungle imparts to babes and sucklings a voracious appetite. Besides your own dhye, brought from Calcutta, there is not another wet-nurse to be had, for love or money. Immediately Dhye strikes for higher wages. The Baba Sahib, she says, has defiled her rice; yesterday he put his foot into her curry; to-day he washes the monkey's tail in her consecrated lotah. What shall she do? she has lost caste; the presents to the Brahmins, that her reinstatement will cost her, will consume all her earnings from the beginning. ”

“ Little Mungloo, who was cunning as a Thug, acted with surprising talent; in fact, some of the Sahibs thought he rather overdid his part, for he dropped his hubble-bubble almost awkwardly, and even kicked,--which the real Nawab had too much self-respect to do,--so that he sent one of his slippers flying one way, and the other another. But he choked, and gasped, and showed the whites of his eyes, and turned black in the face, and shivered through all his frame, so very naturally, that his admiring companions clapped their hands vehemently, and cried, Wah, wah! with all their little lungs. ”

“ It bullies its bhearer; it bangs distractingly on the tom-tom; it surfeits itself to an apoplectic point with pish-pash; it burns its mouth with hot curry, and bawls; it indulges in horrid Hindostanee songs, whereof the burden will not bear translation; it insults whatever is most sacred to the caste attachments of its attendants; the Moab of ayahs is its wash-pot, over an Edom of bhearers will it cast out its shoe; it slaps the mouth of a gray-haired khansaman with its slipper, and dips its poodle's paws in a Mohammedan kitmudgar's rice ”

“ The Persian kitten stands high in the favor of Hastings Clive.
Hastings Clive has a whole array of parroquets and hill-mainahs, which, as they learned their small language from his peculiar scurrilous practice, are but blackguard birds at best. He also rejoices in many blue-jays, rescued from the Ganges, whereinto they were thrown as offerings to the vengeful Doorga during the barbarous pooja celebrated in her name. Very proud, too, is Hastings Clive of his pigeons,--his many-colored pigeons from Lucknow, Delhi, and Benares ”

“ If it happen to be only a girl, there will be a trace of pity in the silent salaam with which the grim durwan salutes you as you roll into your palkee at the gate to proceed to the godowns where they are weighing the saltpetre and the gunny bags. ”

“ Less interesting, because formal and inanimate, even to sulkiness, are the prim little Parsee maidens, who often wear an "exercised" expression, of a settled sort, as though they were weary of reflecting on the hollowness of the world, and how their dolls are stuffed with sawdust, and that Dakhma, the Tower of Silence, is the end of all things. ”

“ There is much clapping of hands, and happy wah-wah-ing, wherefrom you conclude that Hastings Clive's birth-day is at least one good result of his being born at all.
The Sahib baba-logue have a lively share in several of the native festivals. The Hoolee, for instance, is their high carnival of fun, when they pelt their elders and each other with the red powder of the mhindee, and repel laughing assaults with smart charges of rose-water fired from busy little squirts. ”

“ You try a goat; she does not agree with Baby, for she butts him treacherously, and, leaping over his prostrate body, scampers, like Leigh Hunt's pig in Smithfield Market, up all manner of figurative streets. ”

“ All the people, be they illustrious personages or the common herd, who assist in the ceremony, are puppets a span long, rudely constructed and coarsely painted, but very faithful as to costume and manners, and most dexterously played upon by the invisible tamasha-wallahs, whom the curtain conceals.
A silver throne having been wheeled out on the portico by manikin bhearers, the manikin Rajah, attended by his manikin moonshee, and as many manikin courtiers as the tamasha property-man can supply, comes forth in his wooden way, and seats himself on the throne in wooden state ”

“ Many and grievous perils do environ baby-life by the Ganges,--perils of dry nurses, perils by wolves, perils by crocodiles, perils by the Evil Eye, perils by kidnappers, perils by cobras, perils by devils. ”

“ During the illumination of the Duwallee, they receive from the servants presents of fantastic toys, and search in the compounds by moonlight for the flower of the tree that never blossoms, and for the soul of a snake, whence comes to the finder good luck for the rest of his life. ”

“ The happiness and honors which should follow upon the birth of a male child being figuratively comprehended in that enlargement of the liver whence comes the good digestion for which alone life is worth the living. ”

“ We are told--and, being philosophers, we will amuse ourselves by believing--that there are towns in India, somewhere between Cape Comorin and the Himalayas, wherein everything is butcha,--that is, "a little chap" ”