little bazaars, and help their little selves to their little hearts’ content, without “begging your little pardons,” or “by your little leaves”; where dirty little fakirs and yogees hold their dirty little arms above their dirty little heads, until their dirty little muscles are shrunk to dirty little rags, and their dirty little finger-nails grow through the backs of their dirty little hands,—­or wear little ten-penny nails thrust through their little tongues till they acquire little chronic impediments in their decidedly dirty little speech,—­or, by means of little hooks through the little smalls-of-their-backs, circumgyrate from little churruck-posts for the edification of infatuated little crowds and the honor of horrid little goddesses; where plucky little widows perform their little suttees for defunct little husbands, grilling on little funeral piles; where mangy little Pariah dogs defile the little dinners of little high-caste folks, by stealing hungry little sniffs from sacred little pots; where omnivorous little adjutant-birds gobble up little glass bottles, and bones, and little dead cats, and little old slippers, and bits of little bricks, in front of little shops in little bazaars; where vociferous little circars are driving little bargains with obese little banyans, and consequential little chowkedars—­that is, policemen—­are bullying inoffensive little poor people, and calling them sooa-logue,—­that is, pigs;—­where—­where, in fine, everything in heathen human-nature happens butcha, and the very fables with which the little story-tellers entertain the little loafers on the corners of the little streets, are full of little giants and little dwarfs.  Let us pursue the little idea, and talk butcha to the end of this chapter.

When, in Calcutta, you have smitten the dry rock of your lonely life with the magic rod of connubial love, and that well-spring of pleasure, a new baby, has leaped up in the midst of your wilderness of exile, the demonstration, if any, with which your servants will receive the glad tidings, will depend wholly on the “denomination of the imbecile offspring,” as our eleemosynary widow, Mrs. Diana Theodosia Comfort Green, would call it.  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.  As he touches his forehead with his joined palms, he thinks of the difference that color makes to the babivorous crocodiles of Ganges.  Perhaps your gray-beard circar, privileged by virtue of high caste and faithful service, will take upon himself to condole with you:  “Khodabund” he will say, “better luck next time; Heaven is not always with one’s paternal hopes; let us trust that my lord may live to say it might have been worse; let us pray that the baba’s bridal necklace may be as gay as rubies and as light as lilies, and that she may die before her husband.”