o return the call of theirs. These calls are
all indispensable; and being made in the forenoon, become very
disagreeable in the hot season; all complain of them, yet no one
forgoes his claim upon them; and till the claim is fulfilled, people
will not recognize each other as acquaintances.[7] Unmarried officers
generally dine in the evening, because it is a more convenient hour
for the mess; and married civil functionaries do the same, because it
is more convenient for their office work. If you invite those who
dine at that hour to spend the evening with you, you must invite them
to dinner, even in the hot weather; and if they invite you, it is to
dinner. This makes intercourse somewhat heavy at all times, but more
especially so in the hot season, when a table covered with animal
food is sickening to any person without a keen appetite, and
stupefying to those who have it. No one thinks of inviting people to
a dinner and ball--it would be vandalism; and when you invite them,
as is always the case, to come after dinner, the ball never begins
till late at night, and seldom ends till late in the morning. With
all its disadvantages, however, I think dining in the evening much
better for those who are in health, than dining in the afternoon,
provided people can avoid the intermediate meal of tiffin. No person
in India should eat animal food more than once a day; and people who
dine in the evening generally eat less than they would if they dined
in the afternoon. A light breakfast at nine; biscuit, or a slice of
toast with a glass of water, or soda-water, at two o'clock, and
dinner after the evening exercise, is the plan which I should
recommend every European to adopt as the most agreeable.[8] When
their digestive powers get out of order, people must do as the
doctors tell them.

There is, I believe, no society in which there is more real urbanity
of manners than in that of India--a more general disposition on the
part of its different members to sacrifice their own comforts and
conveniences to those of others, and to make those around them happy,
without letting them see that it costs them an effort to do so.[9]
There is assuredly no society where the members are more generally
free from those corroding cares and anxieties which 'weigh upon the
hearts' of men whose incomes are precarious, and position in the
world uncertain. They receive their salaries on a certain day every
month, whatever may be the state of the seasons or