The style of Hindoo politeness is format and imperturbably grave, utterly devoid of heartiness or impulsiveness; and the cordiality which distinguishes the intercourse of American friends appears to the native gentleman boisterous and vulgar.  I never saw Karlee laugh; and if I had happened to snatch him from sudden death by fire or water, I think he would have acknowledged the obligation with precisely the same mathematical salaam, or at most the same sententious obsequiousness, with which he accepted a buksheesh of a half-rupee; and yet in both good-humor and gratitude he was as cheerful and as worthy as the most giddy and gushing of damsels.  But I must acknowledge there was something truly corpsy in the solemnity with which he would “lay out” a clean shirt.  Even so, in the midst of all the jolly uproar of a mess dinner, our Kitmudgars would stand in grim deadliness at our backs, like so many executioners, only waiting for a sign from the ruthless Kousomar, who was just then horribly popping the champagne corks, to behead us,—­each his own doomed Sahib.

No wonder Karlee was a gentleman; for the Vishnu Pooran was his Chesterfield, and he had its precepts by heart.  “A wise man,” he would say to the pert young Kitmudgars, as they bragged and wrangled, between their hubble-bubbles, on the back stairs,—­“a wise man will never address another with the least unkindness; but will always speak gently, and with truth, and never make public another’s faults.  He will never engage in a dispute with either his superiors or his inferiors:  controversy and marriage are permitted only between equals.  Nor will he ever associate with wicked persons:  half an instant is the utmost time he should allow himself to remain in their company.  A wise man, when sitting, will not put one foot over the other, nor stretch forth his foot in the presence of a superior; but he will sit with modesty, in the posture styled virasama.  Above all, he will not expectorate at the time of eating, offering oblations, or repeating prayers, or in the presence of any respectable person; nor will he ever cross the shadow of a venerable man or of an idol.”

For those who imagine that polygamy is a popular institution in Hindostan, the answer of a Hill-man to a Mofussil magistrate should suffice.  “Do you keep more than one wife?” “We can hardly feed one; why should we keep more?” In fact, the privilege of maintaining a plurality of wives is restricted to a very few,—­those only of the largest means and smallest scruples,—­except in the case of Kooleen Brahmins, that superlative aristocracy of caste which is supposed to be descended from certain illustrious families who settled in Bengal several centuries ago.  Wealthy Hindoos of low degree eagerly aspire to the honor of mixing their puddle blood with the quintessentially clarified fluid that glorifies the circulatory systems of these demigods, and the result is a very pretty and profitable branch