ho owns a
brougham and many people who hire _ticca-gharis_ keep top-hats and black
frock-coats. The effect is curious, and at first fills the beholder with
surprise.

And now, "let us see the handsome houses where the wealthy nobles
dwell." Northerly lies the great human jungle of the native city,
stretching from Burra Bazar to Chitpore. That can keep. Southerly is the
_maidan_ and Chowringhi. "If you get out into the centre of the _maidan_
you will understand why Calcutta is called the City of Palaces." The
travelled American said so at the Great Eastern. There is a short
tower, falsely called a "memorial," standing in a waste of soft, sour
green. That is as good a place to get to as any other. The size of the
_maidan_ takes the heart out of any one accustomed to the "gardens" of
up-country, just as they say Newmarket Heath cows a horse accustomed to
more a shut-in course. The huge level is studded with brazen statues of
eminent gentlemen riding fretful horses on diabolically severe curbs.
The expanse dwarfs the statues, dwarfs everything except the frontage of
the far-away Chowringhi Road. It is big--it is impressive. There is no
escaping the fact. They built houses in the old days when the rupee was
two shillings and a penny. Those houses are three-storied, and
ornamented with service-staircases like houses in the Hills. They are
very close together, and they have garden walls of masonry pierced with
a single gate. In their shut-upness they are British. In their
spaciousness they are Oriental, but those service-staircases do not look
healthy. We will form an amateur sanitary commission and call upon
Chowringhi.

A first introduction to the Calcutta _durwan_ or door-keeper is not
nice. If he is chewing _pan_, he does not take the trouble to get rid of
his quid. If he is sitting on his cot chewing sugar-cane, he does not
think it worth his while to rise. He has to be taught those things, and
he cannot understand why he should be reproved. Clearly he is a survival
of a played-out system. Providence never intended that any native should
be made a _concierge_ more insolent than any of the French variety. The
people of Calcutta put a man in a little lodge close to the gate of
their house, in order that loafers may be turned away, and the houses
protected from theft. The natural result is that the _durwan_ treats
everybody whom he does not know as a loafer, has an intimate and
vendible knowledge of all the outgoings and i