That is the cost of the highest priced man, who can be guide as well as servant, but you can get “bearers” with lesser accomplishments for almost any wages, down as low as $2 a month.  But they are not only worthless; they actually imperil your soul because of their exasperating ways and general cussedness.  You often hear that servants are cheap in India, that families pay their cooks $3 a month and their housemen $2, which is true; but they do not earn any more.  One Swede girl will do as much work as a dozen Hindus, and do it much better than they, and, what is even more important to the housewife, can be relied upon.  In India women never go out to service except as nurses, but in every household you will find not less than seven or eight men servants, and sometimes twenty, who receive from $1 to $5 a month each in wages, but the total amounts up, and they have to be fed, and they will steal, every one of them, and lie and loaf, and cause an infinite amount of trouble and confusion, simply because they are cheap.  High-priced servants usually are an economy—­good things always cost money, but give better satisfaction.

Another common mistake is that Indian hotel prices are low.  They are just as high as anywhere else in the world for the accommodations.  I have noticed that wherever you go the same amount of luxury and comfort costs about the same amount of money.  You pay for all you get in an Indian hotel.  The service is bad because travelers are expected to bring their own servants to answer their calls, to look after their rooms and make their beds, and in some places to wait on them in the dining-room.  There are no women about the houses.  Men do everything, and if they have been well trained as cleaners the hotel is neat.  If they have been badly trained the contrary may be expected.  The same may be said of the cooking.  The landlord and his guest are entirely at the mercy of the cook, and the food is prepared according to his ability and education.  You get very little beef because cows are sacred and steers are too valuable to kill.  The mutton is excellent, and there is plenty of it.  You cannot get better anywhere, and at places near the sea they serve an abundance of fish.  Vegetables are plenty and are usually well cooked.  The coffee is poor and almost everybody drinks tea.  You seldom sit down to a hotel table in India without finding chickens cooked in a palatable way for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and eggs are equally good and plenty.  The bread is usually bad, and everybody calls for toast.  The deserts are usually quite good.

It takes a stranger some time to become accustomed to barefooted servants, but few of the natives in India of whatever class wear shoes.  Rich people, business men, merchants, bankers and others who come in contact on equal terms with the foreign population usually wear them in the streets, but kick them off and go around barefooted as soon as they reach their own offices or their homes.  Although a servant may be dressed in elaborate livery, he never wears shoes.  The butlers, footmen, ushers and other servants at the government house in Calcutta, at the viceregal lodge at Simla, at the palace of the governor of Bombay, and the residences of the other high officials, are all barefooted.