Handmade silks from looms in the cottages of the peasants can still be purchased in Benares and they wear forever.  Some are coarse, and some are fine, but they are all peculiar to this place and cannot be purchased elsewhere because the product is limited and merchants cannot buy them in sufficient quantity to make a profitable trade.  The heavier qualities of silk are used chiefly for men’s clothing.  They wash like linen, they never wear out and are cool and comfortable.  The brocades of Benares are equally famous, and are used chiefly for the ceremonial dresses of the rich and fashionable.  Sometimes they are woven of threads of pure gold and weigh as much as an armor.  These are of course very expensive, and are usually sold by weight.  Very little account is taken of the labor expended upon them, although the designs and the workmanship are exquisite, because the weavers and embroiderers are paid only a few cents a day.  Beside these heavy fabrics are costly tissues as fine as spiders’ webs, also woven of silver and gold and silk and linen.  They are used by the women as head dresses and scarfs and rich men use them for turbans.  Sometimes an Indian noble will have seventy or eighty yards of this delicate gossamer wound about his head and the ends, beautifully embroidered, with long fringes of gold, hang gracefully down upon the shoulders.

It is almost impossible to go through the narrow streets of Benares in the middle of the day, because they are so crowded with men, women, children, priests, pilgrims, peddlers, beggars, mangy dogs, sacred cows, fat and lazy bulls dedicated to Siva, and other animate and inanimate obstructions.  It seems to be the custom for people to live and work in the streets.  A family dining will occupy half the roadway as they squat around their brass bowls and jars and cram the rice and millet and curry into their mouths with their fingers.  The lower classes of Hindus never use tables, knives or forks.  The entire family eats out of the same dish, while the dogs hang around waiting for morsels and a sacred cow is apt to poke its nose into the circle at any time.  The street is often blocked up by a carpenter who is mending a cabinet or putting a new board into a floor.

A little farther along a barber may be engaged in shaving the face and head of some customer.  Both of them are squatting face to face, as often in the middle of the road as elsewhere, and with bowls, razors, soap, bottles and other appurtenances of the trade spread out between them.  Barbers rank next to priests in the religious aristocracy, and, as it is forbidden by the Brahmins for a man to shave himself, they are of much importance in the villages.  Houses are usually set apart for them to live in just as we furnish parsonages for our ministers.  The village barber has certain rights and exemptions that are not enjoyed by other people.  He is not required to do military service in the native states; he does not have to pay taxes, and all members of his caste have a monopoly of their business, which the courts have sustained.  The Brahmins also require that a man must be shaved fasting.