; oh, how Josiah enjoyed the good roast beef and eggs and
bread, most as good as Jonesville bread. Though it seemed kinder queer
to me, and I don't think Miss Meechim and Arvilly enjoyed it at all to
have our chamber work done by barelegged men.

I told Josiah that I didn't know but I ort to have a Ayah or maid
whilst I wuz there, and he said with considerable justice that he
guessed he could ayah me all that wuz necessary.

And so he could, I didn't need no other chaperone. But the Bombay
ladies never stir out without their Ayah, and ladies don't go out in
the streets much anyway.

The market here in Bombay wuz the finest I ever see; it has a
beautiful flower garden and park attached to it, and little rills of
clear water run through the stun gutters. Tropical fruit and
vegetables of all kinds wuz to be seen here. The native market wimmen
didn't have on any clothes hardly, but made it up in jewelry. Some on
'em weighin' out beef to customers would have five or six long gold
chains hanging down to their waist. Bombay has a population of about
a million, a good many English, some Hindus, Persians, Chinese,
Siamese, Turks, and about one-tenth are Parsees, sun-worshippers. They
are many of them wealthy and live in beautiful villas a little out of
the city; they are very intelligent and firm friends of the English.

The Parsees dress in very rich silks and satin, the men in pantaloons
of red or orange and long frocks of gorgeous colored silk; they wear
high-pinted black caps, gold chains and rings and look dretful
dressy.

Josiah loved their looks dearly, and he sez dreamily, "What a show
such a costoom would make in Jonesville; no circus ever went through
there that would attract so much attention," and he added, "their
idees about the sun hain't so fur out of the way. The sun duz give all
the heat and light we have, and it is better to worship that than
snakes and bulls."

My land! had that man a idee of becomin' a Parsee? I sez, "Josiah
Allen, be you a Methodist deacon, or be you not? Are you a-backslidin'
or hain't you?" Sez I, "You had better ask the help of him who made
the sun and the earth to keep you from wobblin'."

He wuz real huffy and sez, "Well, I say it, and stick to it, that it
is better to worship the sun than it is to worship snakes," and come
to think it over, I didn't know but it wuz.

The Parsees live together in big families of relations, sometimes
fifty.

They do not bury their dead, but p