tion on the roadside or on the doorstep of a
house and sets to work to pick out her best fruit and place it on the top
of her basket. She is generally a Deccani, either Musulman or Hindu,
varying in age from 20 to 40 and is fully capable of conciliating the Lord
of the Bombay pavements, when he somewhat roughly commands her to move on.
"Jemadar Saheb" she calls him; and if this flattery is insufficient she
offers one of her ripest mangoes with a glance that he cannot resist. It is
too much for the sepoy: he smiles and tramps off, and she holds her
position undisturbed. If she be a Hindu, you will probably notice
the bright-red mark on her forehead, joining brow to brow, or, in
the words of a Persian poet, uniting two Parthian or Tartar bows
into Kama's Long-bow. The male mango-hawker is a Deccan Hindu or
Musulman gardener who purchases a stock of showy inferior fruit from the
wholesale dealers. After the mango season is over he becomes a vendor of
Poona figs or Nagpur oranges. He is often a small, dark, muscular man who
began life as a day-labourer in the highly-cultivated fields of the Deccan
and has journeyed to the city with his modest savings tightly tied up in
his waist-cloth in the hope of eventually cutting as big a figure in the
village home as does his friend Arjuna, who some years ago returned to his
village as a capitalist and is even now the bosom-friend of the Patel.

[Illustration: The Coffee-seller.]

The itinerant coffee-vendor is a characteristic feature of the Musulman
quarters of Bombay. Of Arab or Egyptian origin, this coffee-trade
immediately proved attractive to the Musulman public and, inasmuch as it
requires little stock or capital, has been a boon to many a poor Mahomedan
anxious to turn an honest penny. The "kahwe-wala" has no cry and yet
manages to proclaim his presence by sounds which are audible in the inmost
darkness of the chals. He is the beetle of the pedlar tribe. He does not
sing, he does not cry--he stridulates. Carrying in his hand a large number
of small coffee-cups, fitted one within another, he strikes them together
like a string of castanets, while in the left hand he bears a portable
stove-like article on which rests his tin or copper kettle.

His entire stock-in-trade, including the ground coffee in his kettle, does
not as a rule exceed five rupees in value. The "kahwe-wala" belongs to
three nationalities, Arab, Negro and Native Indian. If an Arab, he may be a
disabled sailor