ncomings in that house, and
controls, to a large extent, the nomination of the servants. They say
that one of the estimable class is now suing a bank for about three
lakhs of rupees.[15] Up-country, a Lieutenant-Governor's servant has to
work for thirty years before he can retire on seventy thousand rupees of
savings. The Calcutta _durwan_ is a great institution. The head and
front of his offence is that he will insist upon trying to talk English.
How he protects the houses Calcutta only knows. He can be frightened out
of his wits by severe speech, and is generally asleep in calling hours.
If a rough round of visits be any guide, three times out of seven he is
fragrant of drink. So much for the _durwan_. Now for the houses he
guards.

[15] Say $100,000.

Very pleasant is the sensation of being ushered into a pestiferously
stablesome drawing-room. "Does this always happen?" "No, not unless you
shut up the room for some time; but if you open the shutters there are
other smells. You see the stables and the servants' quarters are close
to." People pay five hundred a month for half-a-dozen rooms filled with
scents of this kind. They make no complaint. When they think the honour
of the city is at stake they say defiantly: "Yes, but you must remember
we're a metropolis. We are crowded here. We have no room. We aren't like
your little stations." Chowringhi is a stately place full of sumptuous
houses, but it is best to look at it hastily. Stop to consider for a
moment what the cramped compounds, the black soaked soil, the netted
intricacies of the service-staircases, the packed stables, the seethment
of human life round the _durwans'_ lodges and the curious arrangement of
little open drains mean, and you will call it a whited sepulchre.

Men living in expensive tenements suffer from chronic sore throat, and
will tell you cheerily that "we've got typhoid in Calcutta now." Is the
pest ever out of it? Everything seems to be built with a view to its
comfort. It can lodge comfortably on roofs, climb along from the
gutter-pipe to piazza, or rise from sink to verandah and thence to the
topmost story. But Calcutta says that all is sound and produces figures
to prove it; at the same time admitting that healthy cut flesh will not
readily heal. Further evidence may be dispensed with.

Here come pouring down Park Street on the _maidan_ a rush of broughams,
neat buggies, the lightest of gigs, trim office brownberrys, shining
victorias, a