uld have exceeded his kindness, but the peculiar nature of the
entertainment he gave me may be conjectured when I mention that he had
not such a thing as a chair, table, knife, fork or spoon to his name.
Perforce, I had to dine sitting on the floor and with the sole aid of
my fingers. However, I accepted my fate without a murmur, and soon
learned to feed after the fashion of Eden as deftly as if I had been
bred to it. Hindoo cookery I could rarely screw up my courage so
heroically as to venture upon. Even the odor of my Calcutta washerman,
redolent with the fragrance of castor oil, was too much for my
unchastised squeamishness; and as to assafoetida, the favorite
condiment of our Aryan cousins, I was so uncatholic as to bring away
from India the same aversion to it that I had carried out there. But a
Mohammedan has, with some unimportant reservations, highly rational
notions as concerns the eatable and the drinkable. His endless variety
of kabobs and pilaus is worthy of all commendation; and his sherbets,
which refresh without a sting or a resipiscent headache next morning,
are no doubt the style of phlegm-cutters and gum-ticklers which one
had better patronize pretty exclusively while between the tropics. The
gentleman of the circumcision whom I had for host was, I suspect,
something of an epicure, and his cooking was such as I found eminently
toothsome. My dinner was on the floor at the polite hour of eight,
after which he would come to me for a short talk and to chant a little
Persian poetry. At nine he was due in his harem, which, he gave me to
understand, was a populous establishment.

For my special service he detailed, to my surprise, not a man, but a
young woman, who, I take it, was in bonds. Under considerate Hindoo
and Mohammedan masters slavery is, however, the lightest of hardships,
and the damsel appropriated to wait on me, if she were not a slave,
could not have been lighter-hearted. A student of all the natural
products of the East, I did not neglect while there to bestow a proper
share of study on Indian womankind; and as my Fyzabad abigail was a
noteworthy specimen of her species, I may as well gratify the
curiosity of the untraveled to know what she was like. Such as she was
the queen of Sheba would perhaps have been if scoured very bright and
pared shapely. Her name was Dilruba, which signifies, being
interpreted, "Heart-ravisher." She may have been seventeen or
eighteen; she was of a good height and