and to acknowledge with gratitude the benefit I have derived by this personal convenience, yet I never seat myself in the palankeen or thonjaun[14] without a feeling bordering on self-reproach, as being one amongst the number to perpetuate the degradation of my fellow-mortals.  They, however, feel nothing of this sentiment themselves, for they are trained from boyhood to the toil, as the young ox to the yoke.  It is their business; the means of comfort is derived to them by this service; they are happy in the employment, and generally cheerful, and form a class of people in themselves respected by every other both for their services and for their general good behaviour.  In the houses of foreigners they are the most useful amongst the whole establishment; they have charge of property, keep the furniture in exact order, prepare the beds, the lamps, and the candles, where wax is used.  Tallow having beef-fat in its manufacture is an abomination, to the Hindoos, by whom it is considered unholy to slay, or even to touch any portion of the slaughtered cattle of their respect:  for believing in transmigration, they affirm that these animals receive the souls of their departed relations.  The bearers make the best of nurses to children, and contribute to the comfort of their employer by pulling the punkah night and day:  in short, so necessary are these servants to the domestic economy of sojourners in the East, that their merits as a people must be a continual theme of praise; for I know not how an English establishment could be concluded with any degree of comfort without these most useful domestics.  But I have allowed my pen to stray from the subject of female seclusion, and will here bring that part of my history to a close in very few words.

Those females who rank above peasants or inferior servants, are disposed from principle to keep themselves strictly from observation; all who have any regard for the character or the honour of their house, seclude themselves from the eye of strangers, carefully instructing their young daughters to a rigid observance of their own prudent example.  Little girls, when four years old, are kept strictly behind the purdah, and when they move abroad it is always in covered conveyances, and under the guardianship of a faithful female domestic, who is equally tenacious us the mother to preserve the young lady’s reputation unblemished by concealing her from the gaze of men.

The ladies of zeenahnah life are not restricted from the society of their own sex; they are, as I have before remarked, extravagantly fond of company, and equally as hospitable when entertainers.  To be alone is a trial to which they are seldom exposed, every lady having companions amongst her dependants; and according to her means the number in her establishment is regulated.  Some ladies of rank have from two to ten companions, independent of slaves and domestics; and there are some of the Royal family at Lucknow who entertain in their service two or three hundred female dependants, of all classes.  A well-filled zeenahnah is a mark of gentility; and even the poorest lady in the country will retain a number of slaves and domestics, if she cannot afford companions; besides which they are miserable without society, the habit of associating with numbers having grown up with infancy to maturity:  ‘to be alone’ is considered, with women thus situated, a real calamity.