pours the currie over it.  This being done, the husband proceeds to mix up the currie and the rice with his hands, and puts it into his mouth.  He never uses a knife and fork, as is customary with us.  The currie of which I have spoken is a sauce of a yellow color, owing to the munchel, a yellow root which they put in it.  This and onions, kottamaly-seeds mustard, serakum, pepper, etc., constitute the ingredients of the currie.  Some add to these ghea, or melted butter, and cocoa-nut milk.  By the cocoa-nut milk, I do not mean the water of the cocoa-nut.  This—­except in the very young cocoa-nut, when it is a most delicious beverage—­is never used.  The milk is squeezed from the meat of the cocoa-nut, after it has been reduced to a pulp by means of an indented circular iron which they use for this purpose.

After the husband has eaten, the wife brings water for him to wash his hands.  This being done, she supplies him with vettalay, paakku, shell-lime, and tobacco, which he puts into his mouth as his dessert.  The vettalay is a very spicy leaf.  Why they use paakku, I do not know.  It is a nut, which they cut into small pieces, but it has not much taste.  Sometimes the wife brings her husband a segar.  This people, I am sorry to say, are great smokers and chewers, practices of which I hope that you, my dear children, will never be guilty.  In Ceylon, it is customary for females to smoke.  Frequently, after the husband has smoked for a while, he hands the segar to his wife.  She then puts it into her mouth, and smokes.

Several years ago, one of the schoolmasters in that island became a Christian.  After he had partaken of the Lord’s supper, his wife considered him so defiled, that she would not put his segar into her mouth for a month afterwards.  She, however, has since become a Christian.

I spoke just now of the plantain-leaf.  This leaf is sometimes six feet long, and in some places a foot and a half wide.  It is an unbroken leaf, with a large stem running through the middle of it.  It is one of the handsomest of leaves.  Pieces enough can be torn from a single leaf, to take the place of a dozen plates.  When quite young, it is an excellent application to surfaces which have been blistered.

When this people eat, they do not use tables and chairs.  They sit down on mats, and double their legs under them, after the manner of our friends the tailors in America, when they sew.  This is the way in which the natives as a general thing, sit in our churches.  It is not common to have benches or pews for them.  Carpenters and other tradesmen also sit down either on a board, or on the ground, or on their legs, when they work.  It would divert you much to see their manoeuvring.  If a carpenter, for instance, wants to make a little peg, he will take a small piece of board, and place it in an erect position between his feet, the soles of which are turned inward so as to press upon the board.  He then takes his chisel in one hand, and his mallet in the other, and cuts off a small piece.  Afterwards he holds the piece in one hand, and while he shapes it with his chisel with the other, he steadies it by pressing it against his great toe.