Sleep on, sleep on, my baba dear! 
    Thy faithful slave is watching near. 
    Thy father, my dear, is the jemadar
    Of a province which stretches wide and far;
    And his brother, my child, is a moonsif great,
    Who ruleth o’er many a ryot’s fate.

    Sleep on, sleep on, my baba dear! 
    Thy faithful slave is watching near. 
    Thy mother of hearts is the powerful queen,
    The loveliest lady that ever was seen;
    And there ne’er was slave more faithful, I trow,
    Than she who is rocking thy cradle now.

I have said that our ayah sometimes comes home with her charges—­comes to our home from her own.  It is a bad exchange.  She awakes slowly from her dream, as she sees the rosy cheeks, full pouting lips, and round wondering eyes, that are turned upon the dark stranger and her pale, thin, little ones.  The comparison is painful; these cherub children have no sympathy with the lonely Hindoo; and the servants of the house, although awed at first by her foreign aspect, and calm, stately air, have no permanent respect for one who ranks neither with their superiors nor with themselves.  The climate, too, is as chilling as the manners around her; her heretofore babas are lords to nobody but herself; and so, with one thing and another, she grows home-sick, her heart yearns for her own sunny land, and she is glad—­sorrowfully glad—­when at last the announcement is made, that an ayah wants to go back to India with a family.

And in India once more, what then?  Why then, the great ocean is between her and her fledged nurslings, and she looks round for some new objects of love and devotion.  These she probably finds in another home, another mistress, another baba; her heart begins its course anew; and the ayah lives a second life in the young lives of her children.  No joyless existence is hers, no cares without ample compensations; but yet when I see in my own country one of these solitary, strangely-attired, dark-skinned women, I feel attracted towards her by an almost tearful sympathy, and have ever a kind look and a warm, gentle word for the poor ayah.

FOOTNOTES: 

[3] The red sandal-wood is more rare and valuable than the yellow.

SMALL INVESTMENTS.

The investment of small savings in land with a view to spade-husbandry, was a few years ago brought prominently before the working-classes.  We took occasion, at the time, to warn the humbler classes generally against projects of this kind, but without any beneficial effect.  Land-schemes, as they were called, were puffed into popularity, and all our advices and remonstrances on the subject were rejected with disdain.  Universal ruin has followed these schemes, and the unfortunate dupes are left to mourn their loss.  Nothing is more specious than a plan of earning an independent