ld cat at its birth.' A _Kayasth_, writer, or _putwarrie_, may be
allowed to live till he is twelve years old, at which time he is sure
to have learned rascality. Then kill him; but kill _gwars_ or cowherds
any time, for they are invariably rascals. There is a deal of grim
bucolic humour in this, and it very nearly hits the truth.

The _putwarrie_, then, is an important personage. He has his
_cutcherry_, or office, where he and his tribe (for there are always
numbers of his fellow caste men who help him in his books and accounts)
squat on their mat on the ground. Each possesses the instruments of his
calling in the shape of a small brass ink-pot, and an oblong box
containing a knife, pencil, and several reeds for pens. Each has a
bundle of papers and documents before him, this is called his _busta_,
and contains all the papers he uses. There they sit, and have fierce
squabbles with the tenantry. There is always some noise about a
putwarrie's cutcherry. He has generally some half dozen quarrels on
hand, but he trusts to his pen, and tongue, and clever brain. He is
essentially a man of peace, hating physical contests, delighting in a
keen argument, and an encounter with a plotting, calculating brain.
Another proverb says that the putwarrie has as much chance of becoming
a soldier as a sheep has of success in attacking a wolf.

The _lohar_, or blacksmith, is very unlike his prototype at home. Here
is no sounding anvil, no dusky shop, with the sparks from the heated
iron lighting up its dim recesses. There is little to remind one of
Longfellow's beautiful poem. The _lohar_ sits in the open air. His
hammers and other implements of trade are very primitive. Like all
native handicraftsmen he sits down at his work. His bellows are made of
two loose bags of sheepskin, lifted alternately by the attendant
coolie. As they lift they get inflated with air; they are then sharply
forced down on their own folds, and the contained air ejected forcibly
through an iron or clay nozzle, into the very small heap of glowing
charcoal which forms the fire. His principal work is making and
sharpening the uncouth-looking ploughshares, which look more like flat
blunt chisels than anything else. They also make and keep in repair the
_hussowahs_, or serrated sickles, with which the crops are cut. They
are slow at their task, but many of them are ingenious workers in
metal. They are very imitative, and I have seen many English tools and
even gun-lock