when he arrives, and they return his call at the same hour soon after.  If he is a married man, the married men upon whom he has called take their wives to call upon his; and he takes his to return the call of theirs.  These calls are all indispensable; and being made in the forenoon, become very disagreeable in the hot season; all complain of them, yet no one forgoes his claim upon them; and till the claim is fulfilled, people will not recognize each other as acquaintances.[7] Unmarried officers generally dine in the evening, because it is a more convenient hour for the mess; and married civil functionaries do the same, because it is more convenient for their office work.  If you invite those who dine at that hour to spend the evening with you, you must invite them to dinner, even in the hot weather; and if they invite you, it is to dinner.  This makes intercourse somewhat heavy at all times, but more especially so in the hot season, when a table covered with animal food is sickening to any person without a keen appetite, and stupefying to those who have it.  No one thinks of inviting people to a dinner and ball—­it would be vandalism; and when you invite them, as is always the case, to come after dinner, the ball never begins till late at night, and seldom ends till late in the morning.  With all its disadvantages, however, I think dining in the evening much better for those who are in health, than dining in the afternoon, provided people can avoid the intermediate meal of tiffin.  No person in India should eat animal food more than once a day; and people who dine in the evening generally eat less than they would if they dined in the afternoon.  A light breakfast at nine; biscuit, or a slice of toast with a glass of water, or soda-water, at two o’clock, and dinner after the evening exercise, is the plan which I should recommend every European to adopt as the most agreeable.[8] When their digestive powers get out of order, people must do as the doctors tell them.

There is, I believe, no society in which there is more real urbanity of manners than in that of India—­a more general disposition on the part of its different members to sacrifice their own comforts and conveniences to those of others, and to make those around them happy, without letting them see that it costs them an effort to do so.[9] There is assuredly no society where the members are more generally free from those corroding cares and anxieties which ’weigh upon the hearts’ of men whose incomes are precarious, and position in the world uncertain.  They receive their salaries on a certain day every month, whatever may be the state of the seasons or of trade; they pay no taxes; they rise in the several services by rotation;[10] religious feelings and opinions are by common consent left as a question between man and his Maker; no one ever thinks of questioning another about them, nor would he be tolerated if he did so.  Most people take it for granted that those which they got from their parents were the right ones; and as such they cherish them.  They remember with feelings of filial piety the prayers which they in their infancy offered to their Maker, while kneeling by the side of their mothers; and they continue to offer them up through life, with the same feelings and the same hopes.[11]