FOOTNOTES:
[2] The old philosophy held, that "Nature abhors a vacuum"; but modern observation shows that the natural Yankee abhors the air.
THE SWORD OF BOLIVAR.
With the steadfast stars above us,
And the molten stars below,
We sailed through the Southern midnight,
By the coast of Mexico.
Alone, on the desolate, dark-ringed,
Rolling and flashing sea,
A grim old Venezuelan
Kept the deck with me,
And talked to me of his country,
And the long Spanish war,
And told how a young Republic
Forged the sword of Bolivar.
Of no base mundane metal
Was the wondrous weapon made,
And in no earth-born fire
Was fashioned the sacred blade.
But that it might shine the symbol
Of law and light in the land,
Dropped down as a star from heaven,
To flame in a hero's hand.
And be to the world a portent
Of eternal might and right,
They chose for the steel a splinter
From a fallen aerolite.
Then a virgin forge they builded
By the city, and kindled it
With flame from a shattered palm-tree,
Which the lightning's torch had lit,—
That no fire of earthly passion
Might taint the holy sword,
And no ancient error tarnish
The falchion of the Lord.
For Quito and New Granada
And Venezuela they pour
From three crucibles the dazzling
White meteoric ore.
In three ingots it is moulded,
And welded into one,
For an emblem of Colombia,
Bright daughter of the sun!
It is drawn on a virgin anvil,
It is heated and hammered and rolled,
It is shaped and tempered and burnished,
And set in a hilt of gold;
For thus by the fire and the hammer
Of war a nation is built,
And ever the sword of its power
Is swayed by a golden hilt.
Then with pomp and oratory
The mustachioed señores brought
To the house of the Liberator
The weapon they had wrought;
And they said, in their stately phrases,
"O mighty in peace and war!
No mortal blade we bring you,
But a flaming meteor.
"The sword of the Spaniard is broken,
And to you in its stead is given,
To lead and redeem a nation,
This ray of light from heaven."
The gaunt-faced Liberator
From their hands the symbol took,
And waved it aloft in the sunlight,
With a high, heroic look;
And he called the saints to witness:
"May these lips turn into dust,
And this right hand fail, if ever
It prove recreant to its trust!
"Never the sigh of a bondman
Shall cloud this gleaming steel,
But only the foe and the traitor
Its vengeful edge shall feel.
"Never a tear of my country
Its purity shall stain,
Till into your hands, who gave it,
I render it again."
Now if ever a chief was chosen
To cover a cause with shame,
And if ever there breathed a caitiff,
Bolivar was his name.
From his place among the people
To the highest seat he went,
By the winding paths of party
And the stair of accident.
A restless, weak usurper,
Striving to rear a throne,
Filling his fame with counsels
And conquests not his own;—
Now seeming to put from him
The sceptre of command,
Only that he might grasp it
With yet a firmer hand;—
His country's trusted leader,
In league with his country's foes,
Stabbing the cause that nursed him,
And openly serving those;—
The chief of a great republic
Plotting rebellion still,—
An apostate faithful only
To his own ambitious will.
Drunk with a vain ambition,
In his feeble, reckless hand,
The sword of Eternal Justice
Became but a brawler's brand.
And Colombia was dissevered,
Rent by factions, till at last
Her name among the nations
Is a memory of the past.
Here the grim old Venezuelan
Puffed fiercely his red cigar
A brief moment, then in the ocean
It vanished like a star;
And he slumbered in his hammock;
And only the ceaseless rush
Of the reeling and sparkling waters
Filled the solemn midnight hush,
As I leaned by the swinging gunwale
Of the good ship, sailing slow,
With the steadfast heavens above her,
And the molten heavens below.
Then I thought with sorrow and yearning
Of my own distracted land,
And the sword let down from heaven
To flame in her ruler's hand,—
The sword of Freedom, resplendent
As a beam of the morning star,
Received, reviled, and dishonored
By another than Bolivar!
And my prayers flew home to my country:
O ye tried and fearless crew!
O ye pilots of the nation!
Now her safety is with you.
Beware the traitorous captain,
And the wreckers on the shore;
Guard well the noble vessel;
And steadily evermore,
As ye steer through the perilous midnight,
Let your faithful glances go
To the steadfast stars above her,
From their fickle gleams below.
THROUGH BROADWAY.
The incessant demolition of which Broadway is the scene denotes to the most careless eye that devotion to the immediate which De Tocqueville maintains to be a democratic characteristic. The huge piles of old bricks which block the way—with their array of placards heralding every grade of popular amusement, from a tragedy of Shakespeare to a negro melody, and from a menagerie to a clairvoyant exhibition, and vaunting every kind of experimental charlatanism, from quack medicine to flash literature—are mounds of less mystery, but more human meaning, than those which puzzle archæologists on the Mississippi and the Ohio; for they are the débris of mansions only half a century ago the aristocratic homes of families whose descendants are long since scattered, and whose social prominence and local identity are forgotten, while trade has obliterated every vestige of their roof-tree and association of their hearth-stone. Such is the constant process. As private residences give way to stores and offices, the upper portion of the island is crowded with their enlarged dimensions and elaborate luxury; churches are in the same manner sacrificed, until St. Paul's and Trinity alone remain of the old sacred landmarks; and the suburban feature—those "fields" where burgomasters foregathered, the militia drilled, and Hamilton's youthful eloquence roused the people to arms—is transferred to the other and distant end of Manhattan, and expanded into a vast, variegated, and beautiful rural domain,—that "the Park" may coincide in extent and attraction with the increase of the population and growth of the city's area. Thus a perpetual tide of emigration, and the pressure of the business on the resident section,—involving change of domicile, substitution of uses, the alternate destruction and erection of buildings, each being larger and more costly in material than its predecessor,—make the metropolis of the New World appear, to the visitor from the Old, a shifting bivouac rather than a stable city, where hereditary homes are impossible, and nomadic instincts prevalent, and where local associations, such as endear or identify the streets abroad, seem as incongruous as in the Eastern desert or Western woods, whose dwellers "fold their tents like the Arabs, and as silently steal away." The absence of the law of primogeniture necessitates the breaking up of estates, and thus facilitates the methods whereby the elegant homestead becomes, in the second or third generation, a dry-goods store, a boarding or club house, a milliner's show-room or a dentist's office. Here and there some venerable gossip will rehearse the triumphs of refined hospitality, or describe the success of a belle or the brilliancy of a genial leader in politics or social pastime, which, years ago, consecrated a mansion or endeared a neighborhood,—whereof not a visible relic is now discoverable, save in a portrait or reminiscent paper conserved in the archives of the Historical Society. And in this speedy oblivion of domestic and social landmarks, how easily we find a reason for the national irreverence, and the exclusive interest in the future, which make the life of America, like the streets of her cities, a scene of transition unhallowed by memorials.
Yet, despite its dead horses and vehicular entanglements, its vile concert saloons, the alternate meanness and magnificence of its architecture, the fragile character of its theatrical structures, and their limited and hazardous means of exit,—despite falling walls and the necessity of police guardianship at the crossings, the reckless driving of butcher-boys and the dexterity of pickpockets,—despite the slippery pavement, and the chronic cry for "relief,"—Broadway is a spectacle and an experience worth patient study, and wonderfully prolific of life-pictures. With a fountain at one end, like a French town, and a chime of bells at the other, like a German city, the intermediate space is as representative a rendezvous as can be found in the world.
The first thing that strikes an experienced eye in New York's great thoroughfare is the paucity of loiterers: he sees, at a glance, that the flâneur is an exotic here. There is that in the gait and look of every one that shows a settled and an eager purpose,—a goal sought under pressure. A counting-room, office, court, mart, or mansion is to be reached punctually, and therefore the eye and step are straightforward, intent, preoccupied. But this peculiarity is chiefly obvious early and late in the day, when business and professional men are on their way to and from the place of their daily vocations. Later, and especially about two hours after noon, it is the dress and number of the other sex that win attention; and to one fresh from London, the street attire of ladies—or those who aspire, with more or less justice, to that title—is a startling incongruity; for the showy colors and fine textures reserved across the sea for the opera, the salon, and the fashionable drive, are here displayed on shopping expeditions, for which an English lady dresses in neutral tints and substantial fabrics,—avoiding rather than courting observation. The vulgar impression derived in Broadway from an opposite habit is vastly increased by modern fashions; for the apology for a bonnet that leaves brow, cheek, and head fully exposed,—the rustle and dimensions of crinoline,—the heavy masses of unctuous false hair attached to the back of the head, deforming its shape and often giving a coarse monstrosity to its naturally graceful poise and proportions,—the inappropriate display of jewelry and the long silk trains of the expensive robes trailing on the dirty walk, and continually caught beneath the feet of careless pedestrians,—all unite to render the exhibition repulsive to taste, good sense, and that chivalric sympathy inspired by the sight of female beauty and grace, so often co-existent with these anomalies. Broadway has often been compared to a kaleidoscope,—an appellation suggested by the variety of shifting tints, from those of female dress to those of innumerable commodities, from dazzling effects of sunshine to the radiance of equipage, vivid paint, gilded signs, and dazzling wares. And blent with this pervading language of colors are the local associations which the articles of merchandise hint. Consider how extensive is their scope,—Persian carpets, Lyons silks, Genoa velvets, ribbons from Coventry and laces from Brussels, the furs of the Northwest, glass of Bohemia, ware of China, nuts from Brazil, silver of Nevada mines, Sicily lemons, Turkey figs, metallic coffins and fresh violets, Arabian dates, French chocolate, pine-apples from the West Indies, venison from the Adirondacs, brilliant chemicals, gilded frames, Manchester cloth, Sheffield cutlery, Irish linens, ruddy fruit, salmon from the Thousand Isles, sables from Russia, watches from Geneva, carvings from Switzerland, caricatures and India-rubber garments, saccharine temples, books in tinted covers, toys, wines, perfumes, drugs, dainties, art, luxury, science, all lavishing their products to allure the throng,—phenomena common, indeed, to all streets devoted to trade, but here uniquely combined with a fashionable promenade, and affording the still-life of a variegated moving panorama. It is characteristic, also, that the only palatial buildings along the crowded avenue are stores and hotels. Architecture thus glorifies the gregarious extravagance of the people. The effect of the whole is indefinitely prolonged, to an imaginative mind, by the vistas at the lower extremity, which reveal the river, and, at sunset, the dark tracery of the shipping against the far and flushed horizon; while, if one lifts his eye to the telegraph wire, or lowers it to some excavation which betrays the Croton pipes, a sublime consciousness is awakened of the relation of this swift and populous eddy of life's great ocean to its distant rural streams, and the ebb and flow of humanity's eternal tide. Consider, too, the representative economics and delectations around, available to taste, necessity, and cash,—how wonderful their contrast! Not long since, an Egyptian museum, with relics dating from the Pharaohs, was accessible to the Broadway philosopher, and a Turkish khan to the sybarite; one has but to mount a staircase, and find himself in the presence of authentic effigies of all the prominent men of the nation, sun-painted for the million. This pharmacist will exorcise his pain-demon; that electrician place him en rapport with kindred hundreds of miles away, or fortify his jaded nerves. Down this street he may enjoy a Russian or Turkish bath; down that, a water-cure. Here, with skill undreamed of by civilized antiquity, fine gold can be made to replace the decayed segment of a tooth; there, he has but to stretch out his foot, and a chiropodist removes the throbbing bunion, or a boy kneels to polish his boots. A hackman is at hand to drive him to the Park, a telescope to show him the stars; he has but to pause at a corner and buy a journal which will place him au courant with the events of the world, or listen to an organ-grinder, and think himself at the opera. This temple is free for him to enter and "muse till the fire burns"; on yonder bookseller's counter is an epitome of the wisdom of ages; there he may buy a nosegay to propitiate his lady-love, or a sewing-machine to beguile his womankind, and here a crimson balloon or spring rocking-horse, to delight his little boy, and rare gems or a silver service for a bridal gift. This English tailor will provide him with a "capital fit," that German tobacconist with a creamy meerschaum. At the artificial Spa he may recuperate with Vichy or Kissingen, and at the phrenologist's have his mental and moral aptitudes defined; now a "medium" invites him to a spiritual séance, and now an antiquarian to a "curiosity shop." In one saloon is lager such as he drank in Bavaria, and in another, the best bivalves in the world. Here is a fine billiard-table, there a gymnasium;—food for mind and body, gratification to taste;—all the external resources of civilization are at hand,—not always with the substantial superiority of those of London or the elegant variety of Paris, but with enough of both to make them available to the eclectic cosmopolite.
The historical epochs of New York are adequately traceable by the successive pictures of her main thoroughfare,—beginning with the Indian village and the primeval forest which Henry Hudson found on the island of Manhattan in 1609, and advancing to the stockade fort of New Amsterdam, built where the Battery now is, by Wouter Van Twiller, the second Dutch governor, and thence to the era when the fur trade, tobacco-growing, and slavery were enriching the India Company, when the Wall was built on the site of the so-called financial rendezvous, to protect the settlement from savage invasion, and a deep valley marked the present junction of Canal Street and Broadway. The advent of a new class of artisans signalizes the arrival of Huguenot emigrants; the rebellion of Leisler marks the encroachment of new political agencies, and the substitution of Pitt's statue for that of George III. on the Bowling Green in 1770, the dawn of Independence, so sturdily ushered in and cherished by the Liberty Boys, and culminating in the evacuation of the British in 1783, the entrance of Washington with the American army, and, two years after, in the meeting of the first Congress. These vicissitudes left their impress on the street. Every church but the Episcopal was turned by the English into a riding-school, prison, or stable; each successive charter was more liberal in its municipal privileges. The Boston stage long went from the Fort to the Park, and so on by the old post-road, and was fourteen days en route; pestilence, imported from the West India islands, depopulated the adjacent houses; water was sold from carts; and dimly lighted was the pedestrian on his midnight way, while old-fashioned watchmen cried the hour; and when, in 1807, Robert Fulton initiated steam navigation, the vast system of ferriage was established which inundated the main avenue of the city with a perpetual tributary stream of floating population from all the outlying shores of the Hudson and East Rivers, Staten and Long Islands, and the villages above Manhattan. A lady who lived in New York forty years ago, and returned this season, expressed her surprise that the matutinal procession of rustics she used to watch from the window of her fashionable domicile in the lower part of Broadway had ceased, so completely had suburban citizens usurped the farmers' old homes. The beautiful pigeons that used to coo and cluster on the cobble stones had no resting-place for their coral feet on the Russ pavement, so thickly moved the drays, and so unremitted was the rush of man and beast. In fact, the one conservative feature eloquent of the past is the churchyard,—the old, moss-grown, sloping gravestones,—landmarks of finished life-journeys, mutely invoking the hurrying crowd through the tall iron railings of Trinity and St. Paul's. It is a striking evidence of a "new country," that a youth from the Far West, on arriving in New York by sea, was so attracted by these ancient cemeteries that he lingered amid them all day,—saying it was the first time he had ever seen a human memorial more than twenty years old, except a tree! And memorable was the ceremony whereby, a few years since, the Historical Society celebrated the bicentennial birthday of Bradford, the old colonial printer, by renewing his headstone. At noonday, when the life-tide was at flood, in lovely May weather, a barrier was stretched across Broadway; and there, at the head of eager gold-worshipping Wall Street, in the heart of the bustling, trafficking crowd, a vacant place was secured in front of the grand and holy temple of Trinity. The pensive chant arose; a white band of choristers and priests came forth; and eminent citizens gathered around to reconsecrate the tablet over the dust of one who, two hundred years ago, had practised a civilizing art in this fresh land, and disseminated messages of religion and wisdom. It was a singular picture, beautiful to the eye, solemn to the feelings, and a rare tribute to the past, where the present sways with such absolute rule. Few Broadway tableaux are so worthy of artistic preservation. Before, the vista of a money-changers' mart; above and below, a long, crowded avenue of metropolitan life; behind, the lofty spire, gothic windows, and archways of the church, and the central group as picturesquely and piously suggestive as a mediæval rite.
Vainly would the most self-possessed reminiscent breast the living tide of the surging thoroughfare, on a weekday, to realize in his mind's eye its ancient aspect; but if it chance to him to land at the Battery on a clear and still Sabbath morning, and before the bells summon forth the worshippers, and to walk thence to Union Square in company with an octogenarian Knickerbocker of good memory, local pride, and fluent speech, he will obtain a mental photograph of the past that transmutes the familiar scene by a quaint and vivid aerial perspective. Then the "Middle Road" of the beginning of this century will reappear,—the traces of a wheat-field on the site of St. Paul's, still a fresh tradition; Oswego Market, opposite Liberty Street, is alive with early customers; the reminiscent beholds the apparition of Rutgers's orchard, whose remaining noble elms yet shade the green vista of the City Hospital, and which was a place for rifling bird's-nests in the boyhood of his pensive companion, whose father played at skittles on the Bowling Green, hard by the Governor's house, while the Dutch householders sat smoking long pipes in their broad porticos, cosily discussing the last news from Antwerp or Delft, their stout rosy daughters meanwhile taking a twilight ramble, with their stalwart beaux, to the utmost suburban limit of Manhattan, where Canal Street now intersects Broadway,—then an unpaved lane with scattered domiciles, only grouped into civic contiguity around the Battery, and with many gardens enhancing its rural aspect. Somewhat later, and Munn's Land Office, at the corner of what is now Grand Street, was suggestive of a growing settlement and the era of speculation; an isolated coach-factory marked the site of the St. Nicholas Hotel; people flocked along, in domestic instalments, to Vauxhall, where now stands the Astor Library, to drink mead and see the Flying Horses; and capitalists invested in "lots" on Bayard's Farm, where Niblo's and the Metropolitan now flourish; the one-story building at the present angle of Prince Street was occupied by Grant Thorburn's father; beyond lay the old road leading to Governor Stuyvesant's Bowerie, with Sandy Hill at the upper end. In 1664, Heere Stras was changed to Broadway. At the King's Arms and Burr's Coffee-House, near the Battery, the traitor Arnold was wont to lounge, and in the neighborhood dwelt the Earl of Stirling's mother. At the corner of Rector Street was the old Lutheran church frequented by the Palatine refugees. Beyond or within the Park stood the old Brewery, Pottery, Bridewell, and Poor-house; relics of an Indian village were often found; the Drover's Inn, cattle-walk, and pastures marked the straggling precincts of the town; and on the commons oxen were roasted whole on holidays, and obnoxious officials hung in effigy. Anon rose the brick mansions of the Rapelyes, Rhinelanders, Kingslands, Cuttings, Jays, Bogarts, Depeysters, Duers, Livingstons, Verplancks, Van Rensselaers, De Lanceys, Van Cortlands, etc.; at first along the "Middle Road," and then in bystreets from the main thoroughfare down to the rivers; and so, gradually, the trees and shrubs that made a rus in urbe of the embryo city, and the gables and tiles, porches and pipes, that marked the dynasty chronicled by old Diedrich, gave way to palatial warehouses, magnificent taverns, and brown stone fronts.
The notes of old travellers best revive the scene ere it was lost in modern improvements. Mrs. Knight, who visited New York in 1704, having performed the journey from Boston all the way on horseback, enjoyed the "vendues" at Manhattan, where "they gave drinks"; was surprised to see "fireplaces that had no jambs" and "bricks of divers colors and laid in checkers, being glazed and looking very agreeable." The diversion in vogue was "riding in sleighs about four miles out of town, where they have a house of entertainment at a place called the Bowery." In 1769 Dr. Burnaby recognized but two churches, Trinity and St. George, and "went in an Italian chaise to a turtle feast on the East River." In 1788, Brissot found that the session of Congress there gave great éclat to New York, but, with republican indignation, he laments the ravages of luxury and the English fashions visible in Broadway,—"silks, gauzes, hats, and borrowed hair;... equipages rare, but elegant." "The men," he adds, "have more simplicity of dress; they disdain gewgaws; but they take their revenge in the luxury of the table";—"and luxury," he observes, "forms a class dangerous to society,—I mean bachelors,—the expense of women causing matrimony to be dreaded by men." It is curious to find the French radical of eighty years ago drawing from the life of Broadway inferences similar to those of the even more emphatic economical moralist of to-day. In 1794, Wansey, a commercial traveller, found the "Tontine near the Battery" the most eligible hotel, and met there Dr. Priestley, breakfasted with Gates, and had a call from Livingston; saw "some good paintings by Trumbull, at the Federal Hall," and Hodgkinson, at the theatre, in "A Bold Stroke for a Husband"; dined with Comfort Sands; and Mr. Jay, "brother to the Ambassador," took him to tea at the "Indian Queen";—items of information that mark the social and political transition since the days of Dutch rule, though the Battery still remained the court end and nucleus of Manhattan.
But it is not local memory alone that the solitude of Broadway awakens in our aged guide; the vacant walk is peopled, to his fancy, with the celebrities of the past whom he has there gazed at or greeted,—Franklin, Jay, Tom Paine, Schuyler, Cobbett, Freneau, and Colonel Trumbull, with their Revolutionary prestige; Volney and Genet, with the memory of French radicalism; Da Ponte and the old Italian opera; Colles and Clinton and the Erie Canal days; Red Jacket and the aborigines; Dunlap and Dennie, the literary pioneers; Cooke, Kemble, Kean, Matthews, and Macready, followed so eagerly by urchin eyes,—the immortal heroes of the stage; Hamilton, Clinton, Morris, Burr, Gallatin, and a score of political and civic luminaries whose names have passed into history; Decatur, Hull, Perry, and the brilliant throng of victorious naval officers grouped near the old City Hotel; Moreau, Louis Philippe, Talleyrand, Louis Napoleon, Maroncelli, Foresti, Kossuth, Garibaldi, and many other illustrious European exiles; Jeffrey, Moore, Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, and the long line of literary lions, from Basil Hall to Tupper; Chancellor Kent, Audubon, Fulton, Lafayette, Randolph, the Prince of Wales, and the Queen of the Sandwich Islands, Turkish admirals, Japanese officials, artists, statesmen, actors, soldiers, authors, foreign savans, and domestic eccentricities, who have perambulated this central avenue of a cosmopolitan American city. Could they have all been photographed, what a reflex of modern society would such a picture-gallery afford!
The old Dutch traders, with the instinct of their Holland habitudes, clung to the water-side, and therefore their domiciles long extended at angles with what subsequently became the principal avenue of the settlement; and until 1642 Pearl Street was the fashionable quarter. Meantime, where now thousands of emigrants daily disembark, and the offices of ocean steamships indicate the facility and frequency of Transatlantic travel, the Indian chiefs smoked the pipe of peace with the victorious colonists under the shadow of Fort Amsterdam, and the latter held fairs there, or gathered, for defence and pastime, round the little oasis of the metropolitan desert where carmen now read "The Sun." No. 1 was the Kennedy House, subsequently the tavern of Mrs. Koch,—whose Dutch husband was an officer in the Indian wars,—and was successively the head-quarters of Clinton, Cornwallis, and Washington, and at last the Prime Mansion; and farther up was Mrs. Ryckman's boarding-house,—genial sojourn of Irving, and the scene of his early pen-craft and youthful companionships, when "New York was more handy, and everybody knew everybody, and there was more good-fellowship and ease of manners." Those were the days of ropewalks and "selectmen," of stage-coaches and oil-lamps. The Yankee invasion had scarcely superseded the Knickerbocker element. The Free Academy was undreamed of; and the City Hotel assemblies were the embryo Fifth Avenue balls. An old Directory or a volume of Valentine's Manual, compared with the latest Metropolitan Guide-Book and Trow's last issue, will best illustrate the difference between Broadway then and now.
But it is not so much the more substantial memorials as the "dissolving views" that give its peculiar character to the street. Entered at the lower extremity by the newly-arrived European, on a rainy morning, the first impression is the reverse of grand or winsome. The squalor of the docks and the want of altitude in the buildings, combined with the bustle and hubbub, strike the eye as repulsive; but as the scene grows familiar and is watched under the various aspects produced by different seasons, weather, and hours of the day, it becomes more and more significant and attractive. Indeed, there is probably no street in the world subject to such violent contrasts. It is one thing on a brilliant and cool October day and another in July. White cravats and black coats mark "Anniversary week"; broad brims and drab, the "Yearly Meeting" of the Friends; the "moving day" of the householders, the "opening day" of the milliners, Christmas and New Year's, sleighing-time and spring, early morning and midnight, the Sabbath and week-days, a cold spell and the "heated term,"—every hour, season, holiday, panic, pastime, and parade brings into view new figures and phases,—diverse phenomena of crowd and character,—like the shifting segments of a panorama. The news of victories during the war for the Union could be read there in people's eyes and heard in their greetings. Sorrowful tidings seemed to magnetize with sadness the long procession. Something in the air foretold the stranger how beat the public pulse. The undercurrent of the prevalent emotion seems to vibrate, with electric sympathy, along the human tide.
A walk in Broadway is a most available remedy for "domestic" vexation and provincial egotism. "Every individual spirit," says Schiller, "waxes in the great stream of multitudes." Stand awhile calmly by the rushing stream, and note its representative significance, or stroll slowly along, with observant eye, to mark the commodities and nationalities by the way. The scene is an epitome of the world. Here crouches a Chinese mendicant, there glides an Italian image-vender; a Swedish sailor is hard pressed by a smoking Cuban, and a Hungarian officer is flanked by a French loiterer; here leers a wanton, there moans a waif; now passes an Irish funeral procession, and again long files of Teutonic "Turners"; the wistful eyes of a beggar stare at the piles of gold in the money-changer's show-window; a sister of charity walks beside a Jewish Rabbi; then comes a brawny negro, then a bare-legged Highlander; figures such as are met in the Levant; school-boys with their books and lunch-boxes, Cockneys fresh from Piccadilly, a student who reminds us of Berlin, an American Indian, in pantaloons; a gaunt Western, a keen Yankee, and a broad Dutch physiognomy alternate; flower-venders, dog-pedlers, diplomates, soldiers, dandies, and vagabonds, pass and disappear; a firemen's procession, fallen horse, dead-lock of vehicles, military halt, or menagerie caravan, checks momently the advancing throng; and some beautiful face or elegant costume looms out of the confused picture like an exquisite vision; great cubes of lake crystal glisten in the ice-carts hard by blocks of ebon coal from the forests of the primeval world; there a letter-carrier threads his way, and here a newsboy shouts his extra; a milk-cart rattles by, and a walking advertisement stalks on; here is a fashionable doctor's gig, there a mammoth express-wagon; a sullen Southerner contrasts with a grinning Gaul, a darkly-vested bishop with a gayly-attired child, a daintily-gloved belle with a mud-soiled drunkard; a little shoe-black and a blind fiddler ply their trades in the shadow of Emmet's obelisk, and a toy-merchant has Montgomery's mural tablet for a background; on the fence is a string of favorite ballads and popular songs; a mock auctioneer shouts from one door, and a silent wax effigy gazes from another. Pisani, who accompanied Prince Napoleon in his yacht-voyage to America, calls Broadway a bazaar made up of savagery and civilization, a mile and a half long; and M. Fisch, a French pasteur, was surprised at the sight of palaces six or seven stories high devoted to commerce and les figures fines et gracieuses, la démarche légère et libre des femmes, les allures vives de toute la population. The shopkeepers are urbanely courteous, says one traveller. "Horses and harness are fine, but equipages inferior," observes another; while a third remarks, after witnessing the escapade of vehicles in Broadway: "American coachmen are the most adroit in the world."
It has been said that a Paris gamin would laugh at our fêtes; and yet, if such a loyal custodian as one of the old sacristans we meet abroad, who has kept a life-vigil in a famous cathedral, or such a vigilant chronicler as was Dr. Gemmelaro, who for years noted in a diary the visitors to Ætna, and all the phenomena of the volcano,—if such a fond sentinel were to have watched, even for less than a century, and recorded the civic, military, and industrial processions of Broadway, what a panoramic view we should have of the fortunes, development, and transitions of New York! The last of the cocked-hats would appear with the final relics of Dutch and Quaker costume; the celebration of the opening of the Erie Canal would seem consummated by the festivals that signalized the introduction of Croton, and the success of the Atlantic Telegraph; the funeral cortége of Washington would precede that of scores of patriots and heroes, from Hamilton and Lawrence to John Quincy Adams and General Wadsworth; Scott would reappear victorious from Mexico, Kossuth's plumed hat wave again to the crowd, grim Jackson's white head loom once more to the eager multitude, and Lafayette's courteous greetings win their cheers; St. Patrick's interminable line of followers would contrast with the robes and tails of the Japanese,—the lanterns of a political battalion, with the badges of a masonic fraternity,—the obsolete uniform of the "Old Continentals," with the red shirts of the firemen and the miniature banners of a Sunday-school phalanx,—the gay citizen soldiers who turned out to honor Independence or Evacuation Day, with the bronzed and maimed veterans bringing home their bullet-torn flags from the bloody field of a triumphant patriotic war,—the first negro regiment raised therefor cheerily escorted by the Union League Club, with the sublime funeral train of the martyred President. Including party demonstrations, popular ovations, memorable receptions and obsequies,—Broadway processions, historically speaking, uniquely illustrate the civic growth, the political freedom, the cosmopolitan sympathies, and the social prosperity of New York.
The mutations and ameliorations of Broadway are singularly rapid. It is but a few years since the eye of the passenger therein often caught sight of pleasant domestic nooks,—bulbs in bloom, a canary, gold-fish, or a graceful head bent over a book or crochet-work, at the cheerful window,—where now iron fronts and plate-glass of enormous size proclaim the prosperous warehouse. One of those sudden and sweeping conflagrations, which so frequently make a breach in the long line of edifices, destroyed within a few months the tall white walls of the American Museum, with its flaring effigies of giants, dwarfs, and monsters, and its band of musicians in the balcony, so alluring to the rustic visitor. The picturesque church of St. Thomas and the heavy granite façade of the Stuyvesant Institute, the "Tabernacle," the Art-Academy, and the Society Library buildings have given way to palaces of trade, and been transferred to the indefinitely extensive region of "up town." Stewart's lofty marble stores redeemed the character of the east side, long neglected in favor of the more crowded and showy opposite walk; and his example has been followed by so many other enterprising capitalists, that the original difference, both of aspect and prestige, has all but vanished.
Among the most noticeable of the later features are the prevalence of flower-venders, and the increase of beggars; as well as the luxurious attractiveness of the leading confectioners' establishments, which, in true American eclectic style, combine the Parisian café with the London pastry-cooks and the Continental restaurant,—delectable rendezvous of women who lunch extravagantly. Another and more refined feature is the increase of elegant Art stores, where Gerome's latest miracle of Oriental delineation, a fresh landscape of Auchenbach, or a naive gem by Frere, is freely exposed to the public eye, beside new and elaborate engravings, and graphic war-groups of Rogers, or the latest crayon of Darley, sunset of Church, or rock-study by Haseltine. These free glimpses of modern Art are indicative of the growing taste for and interest therein among us. Pictures were never such profitable and precious merchandise here, and the fortunes of artists are different from what they were in the days when Cole used to bring his new landscape to town, deposit it in the house of a friend, and personally call the attention thereto of the few who cared for such things, and when the fashionable portrait-painter was the exclusive representative of the guild in Gotham.
The Astor House was the first of the large hotels on Broadway; and its erection marks a new era in that favorite kind of enterprise and entertainment of which Bunker's Mansion House was so long the comfortable, respectable, and home-like ideal. Yet it is noteworthy that inns rarely have or keep a representative character with us, but blend popularity with fashion, as nowhere else. One may be associated with Rebeldom, another with trade; this be frequented by Eastern, and that by Western travellers; and nationalities may be identified with certain resorts. But the tendency is towards the eclectic and homogeneous; individuality not less than domesticity is trenched upon and fused in these extravagant caravanseries; and there is no fact more characteristic of the material luxury and gregarious standard of New York life, than that the only temple erected to her patron saint is a marble tavern!
Broadway has always had its eccentric or notable habitués. The Muse of Halleck, in her palmy days, immortalized not a few; and many persons still recall the "crazy poet Clarke," the "Lime-Kiln man," the courteous and venerable Toussaint,—New York's best "image of God carved in ebony,"—tall "gentleman George" Barrett, and a host of "familiar faces" associated with local fame or social traits. The representative clergy, physicians, lawyers, merchants, editors, politicians, bards, and beauties, "men about town," and actors, were there identified, saluted, and observed; and of all these, few seemed so appropriately there as the last; for often there was and is a melodramatic aspect and association in the scene, and Burton, Placide, or the elder Wallack walked there with a kind of professional self-complacency. Thackeray, who had a quick and trained eye for the characteristic in cities, delighted in Broadway, for its cheerful variety, its perpetual "comedy of life"; the significance whereof is only more apparent to the sympathetic observer, because now and then through the eager throng glides the funeral car to the sound of muffled drums, the "Black Maria" with its convict load, or the curtained hospital litter with its dumb and maimed burden. And then, to the practised frequenter, how, one by one, endeared figures and faces disappear from that diurnal stage! It seems but yesterday since we met there Dr. Francis's cheering salutation, or listened to Dr. Bethune's and Fenno Hoffman's genial and John Stephens's truthful talk,—watched General Scott's stalwart form, Dr. Kane's lithe frame, Cooper's self-reliant step, Peter Parley's juvenile cheerfulness,—and grasped Henry Inman's cordial hand, or listened to Irving's humorous reminiscence, and met the benign smile of dear old Clement Moore. As to fairer faces and more delicate shapes,—to encounter which was the crowning joy of our promenade,—and "cheeks grown holy with the lapse of years," memory holds them too sacred for comment. "Passing away" is the perpetual refrain in the chorus of humanity in this bustling thoroughfare, to the sober eye of maturity. The never-ending procession, to the sensitive and the observant, has also infinite degrees of language. Some faces seem to welcome, others to defy, some to lower, and some to brighten, many to ignore, a few to challenge or charm,—as we pass. And what lessons of fortune and of character are written thereon,—the blush of innocence and the hardihood of recklessness, the candid grace of honor and the mean deprecatory glance of knavery, intelligence and stupidity, soulfulness and vanity, the glad smile of friendship, the shrinking eye of fallen fortune, the dubious recognition of disgrace, the effrontery of the adventurer, and the calm, pleasant bearing of rectitude,—all that is beautiful and base in humanity, gleams, glances, and disappears as the crowd pass on.
Richard Cobden, when in New York, was caught and long detained in a mesh of drays and carriages in Broadway, and he remarked that the absence of passionate profanity among the carmen and drivers, and the good-natured patience they manifested, were in striking contrast with the blasphemous violence exhibited in London under like circumstances; and he attributed it to the greater self-respect bred in this class of men here by the prospect and purpose of a higher vocation. It is curious to observe how professional are the impressions and observations of Broadway pedestrians. Walk there with a portrait-painter, and he will infer character or discover subjects of art in every salient physiognomy. The disparities of fortune and the signs of depravity will impress the moralist. The pictorial effects, the adventurous possibilities, the enterprise, care, or pastime of the scene, elicit comments in accordance with the idiosyncrasies or aptitudes of the observer. What gradations of greeting, from the curt recognition to the hilarious salute! What variety of attraction and repulsion, according as your acquaintance is a bore or a beauty, a benefactor or a bankrupt! The natural language of "affairs," however, is the predominant expression. From the days of Rip Van Dam to those of John Pintard, it is as a commercial city that New York has drawn both her rural and foreign population. And her chief thoroughfare retains the distinctive aspect thereof, as the extension of the city has eliminated therefrom all other social elements,—fashion being transferred to the Fifth Avenue, indigence to the Five Points, and equipages to the Central Park. Police reports abound with the ruses and roughnesses of metropolitan life, as developed in the most frequented streets, where rogues seek safety in crowds. A rheumatic friend of ours dropped a guinea in the Strand, and, being unable to stoop, placed his foot upon the coin, and waited and watched for the right man to ask to pick it up for him. He was astonished at the difficulty of the choice. One passer was too elegant, another too abstracted, one looked dishonest, and another haughty. At last he saw approaching a serious, kindly-looking, middle-aged loiterer, with a rusty black suit and white cravat,—apparently a poor curate taking his "constitutional." Our friend explained his dilemma, and was assured, in the most courteous terms, that the stranger would accommodate him with pleasure. Very deliberately the latter picked up the guinea, wiped it carefully on his coat-sleeve, and transferred it to his vest-pocket,—walking off with a cheerful nod. Indignant at the trick, the invalid called out "Stop, thief!" The rascal was chased and caught, and, when taken to the police office, proved to be Bristol Bill,—one of the most notorious and evasive burglars in London. Many like instances of false pretences are traditional in Broadway,—where there are sometimes visible scenic personages, like a quack doctor whose costume and bearing were borrowed from Don Pasquale, and Dr. Knickerbocker in the elegant and obselete breeches, buckles, and cocked hat of the olden time.
A peculiar hardihood and local wit are claimed for what are called the B'hoys. A cockney, in pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, was walking up Broadway with the hospitable citizen to whose guidance he had been specially commended by a London correspondent.
"I want," said the stranger, "to see a b'hoy,—a real b'hoy."
"There's one," replied his companion, pointing to a strapping fellow, in a red shirt and crush hat, waiting for a job at the corner.
"Ah, how curious!" replied John Bull, examining this new species with his double eye-glass,—"very curious; I never saw a real b'hoy before. I should like to hear him speak."
"Then, why don't you talk to him?"
"I don't know what to say."
"Ask him the way to Laight Street."
The inquisitive traveller crossed the street, and, deferentially approaching the new genus, lisped, "Ha—ah—how d' do, ha? I want to go to Laight Street."
"Then why in hell don't you go?" loudly and gruffly asks the b'hoy.
Cockney nervously rejoined his friend, saying,—"Very curious, the Broadway b'hoys!"
To realize the extent and character of the Celtic element in our population, walk down this thronged avenue on a holiday, when the Irish crowd the sidewalks, waiting for a pageant; and all you have ever read or dreamed of savagery will gleam, with latent fire, from those myriads of sullen or daredevil eyes, and lurk in the wild tones of those unchastened voices, as the untidy or gaudily dressed and interminable line of expectants, flushed with alcohol, yield surlily to the backward wave of the policeman's baton. The materials of riot in the heart of the vast and populous city then strike one with terror. We see the worst elements of European life cast upon our shore, and impending, as it were, like a huge wave, over the peacefulness and prosperity of the nation. The corruptions of New York local government are explained at a glance. The reason why even patriotic citizens shrink from the primary meetings whence spring the practical issues of municipal rule is easily understood; and the absolute necessity of a reform in the legislative machinery, whereby property and character may find adequate representation, is brought home to the most careless observer of Broadway phenomena. But it is when threading the normal procession therein that distrust wanes, in view of so much that is hopeful in enterprise and education, and auspicious in social intelligence and sympathy. It may be that on one of our bright and balmy days of early spring, or on a cool and radiant autumnal afternoon, you behold, in your walk from Union Square to the Battery, an eminent representative of each function and phase of high civilization;—wealth vested in real estate in the person of an Astor, peerless nautical architecture in a Webb; the alert step and venerable head of the poet of nature, as Bryant glides by, and the still bright eye of the poet of patriotism and wit, as Halleck greets you with the zest of a rural visitor refreshed by the sight of "old, familiar faces"; anon comes Bancroft, a chronicler of America's past, yet moving sympathetically through living history the while; Verplanck, the Knickerbocker Nestor, and the gentlemen of the old school represented by Irving's old friend, the companionable and courteous Governor Kemble; pensive, olive-cheeked, sad-eyed Hamlet, in the person of Edwin Booth, our native histrionic genius; Vandyke-looking Charles Elliot, the portrait-painter; Paez, the exiled South American general; Farragut, the naval hero; Hancock, Hooker, Barlow, or some other gallant army officer,—volunteer heroes, maimed veterans of the Union war; merchants, whose names are synonymous with beneficence and integrity; artists, whose landscapes have revealed the loveliness of this hemisphere to the Old World; women who lend grace to society and feed the poor; men of science, who alleviate, and of literature, who console, the sorrows of humanity; the stanch in friendship, the loyal in national sentiment, the indomitable in duty, the exemplary in Christian faith, the tender and true in domestic life,—the redeeming and recuperative elements of civic society.
MY HEATHEN AT HOME.
Kicking my "Dutch wife,"[3] that comfortable Batavian device, to the foot of the bed, and turning over with a delicious stretch just as day began to dawn, I opened my eyes with a drowsy sense of refreshing favor,—a half-dream, mixed of burning and breeze,—and discovered old Karlee, my pearl of bhearers,[4] waiting in still patience on the outside of the tent-like mosquito curtain, punka in hand, and tenderly waving a balmy blessing across the sirocco-plagued sand of my slumber.
"Good morning, Karlee."
"Salaam, Sahib-bhote-bhote salaam![5] Master catch plenty good isleep this night, Karlee hope."
"So, so,—so, so. But you look happy this morning; your eyes are bright, and your kummerbund[6] jaunty, and you sport a new turban. What's the good news, old man?"
"Yes, Sahib. Large joy Karlee have got,—happy kismut,[7]—too much jolly good luck, master, please."
"Aha! I'm glad of it. None too jolly for my patient Karlee, I'll engage,—not a whit too happy and proud for my faithful, grateful, humble old man. And what is it?"
"By master's favor, one man-child have got; one fine son he come this night, please master's graciousness."
"A son—your wife!—what, you, Karlee, you?"
"Please master's pardon, no,—Karlee wife, no; Karlee daughter, Karlee ison-in-law, one man-child have catch this night, by Sahib's merciful goodness."
"So! your daughter and her husband, the young kitmudgar,[8] they that were married last year. Good! let us exalt our horn, let us glorify ourselves; for is it not written, 'By a son a man shall obtain victory over all people; by a son's son he shall enjoy immortality; and by a son's son's son he shall reach the solar abodes'? Verily it is pleasant to have a boy-butcha in the house,—the heir and lord. So we will even make merry to-day; to-day we will take holiday. Let the buttons wait, and the beard go awry; send the barber away, and tell the tailor to come to-morrow; for one day Sahib, the master of earth, abdicates in favor of Puttro, the 'Deliverer from Hell,' the true king for every pious Hindoo. And here are some rupees to buy him a happy horoscope with, and to pay the gooroo[9] for a good strong charm, warranted to avert the Evil Eye."
"Ah! Master's bountiful favor too much compassion have,—too much pitiful munif—"
"That's all right, old man. Salaam now; and good luck to the baby."
Now here, thought I, is a chance to observe my pagan at home, under the most favorable circumstances. Karlee will devote the occasion to the domestic felicities; he will spread holiday fare, and there will be neighborly congratulations, and a hospitable relaxation in the family of the orthodox heathen rigor. I will make a "surprise party" of myself, and on the recommendation of a string of corals for the new butcha I'll catch him in the very dishabille of his Hindooism. And I did.
I had often heard that Karlee lived well, and that his household enjoyed substantial comfort in a degree notably superior to the general circumstances of his class. With eminent intelligence and devotion he had served for more than forty years various American gentlemen residing in Calcutta, by whom, in his neat-handedness, he was esteemed a sort of he-Phillis; and for his housewifely dusting of books and furniture, his orderly keeping of drawers and trunks, his sharp eye to punkas and mosquito-nets, and his exacting discipline of sweepers and messengers, barbers, tailors, and washermen, he had been rewarded with generous buksheesh over and above his stipulated, wages, which were liberal; so that among bhearers he was distinguished for respectability, by income as well as influence, and represented the best society. Between his own savings and those of his wife,—who, as an ayah, or nurse, in an English family high in the Civil Service, was extravagantly prized for her fidelity, skill, and patience,—Karlee had laid up a little fortune of ten thousand rupees; but that was partly by dint of a clever speculation now and then in curiosities and choice presents, which he disposed of among those of his American or English patrons who happened to be homeward bound. As it is not permitted to a bhearer to engage directly in trade, these neat little transactions were in all cases shrewdly managed by a friend of Karlee's, a smart sircar,[10] in the employ of a banyan,[11] the bhearer resting strictly in the background, a silent partner, and limiting his co-operation to the prompt furnishing of capital, which consisted not of rupees merely, but of many a cunning hint as well, as to the tastes, ways, and weaknesses of his customers. It was a mutual understanding: we knew of Karlee's interest in these sentimental "operations," and we openly patronized him; he knew which of us had wives, and which sweethearts, across the black water, and he mysteriously patronized us. On that subject my heathen was always at home; and so it happened, by a happy dispensation of cause and effect, that at home he lived like a gentleman.
Through narrow, dingy miles of scrambling bazaar, redolent of all the unfragrances of that dusty, sweaty, greasy, jabbering quarter, I rolled in my light buggy, behind a nimble Arab mare, to a suburban retreat on the eastern skirt of the Black Town, where, just beyond a cluster of mean huts of the sooa-logue, the low laboring rabble, I found Karlee's genteel abode, and was refreshed by the contrast it presented to the hovel of his next neighbor, whose single windowless apartment, and walls of alternate rows of straw and reeds, plastered with mud, proclaimed most unpicturesquely the hard fate of him who springs from the soles of Brahma's feet. Karlee's walls were of solid clay of substantial thickness. His floor was raised a foot or two above the ground, and there was a neatly thatched roof over all, swelling out in an elongated dome, and oddly resembling an inverted boat. As in the rural districts, Karlee had fenced in his privacy with a thick hedge of clipped bamboo surmounting a quadrangular embankment. Before the grateful porch two beautiful tamarind-trees and a palm bestowed their kindly shade, and in the hedge the bamboos, with their golden stems and bright green leaves, rustled cheerfully.
On the other side of the road, and shyly retired from it in a close bamboo covert, dwelt Karlee's partner in the curiosity and general fancy line, the sharp sircar, with whom (both being soodras,[12] and of the same sect) his social relations were intimate and free. The sircar, having thriven under the patronage of more than one rich and liberal baboo,[13] to whose favor he had recommended himself by his business alertness and his ever-politic compliance, had attained unto the honor of a brick house of two stories, plastered and whitewashed without and within, with a flat roof, having a low parapet, and laid with a rain-proof composition of clay and lime. Though his stairs are narrow, his veranda is commodious; and when he shall have made his fortune in the curiosity and general fancy line, he will have wings, with a central area open to the sky, and a double veranda with a lattice. Then, his accommodations being sufficiently enlarged, the proudest wish of his heart shall be gratified in the reunion of his entire family—children and grandchildren, even uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces—under the same roof.
As I drove up to Karlee's hedge, and, tossing the reins to my syce,[14] passed under the tamarind-trees to the little porch, the old man came out to meet me with unwonted precipitation; and, although he maintained with admirable presence of mind that imperturbable gravity, that tranquil, expectant self-possession, which is the study of a Hindoo's life, and to which he gives all his mind from the time when he first begins to have any, ever solicitous to be master of himself though China fall, it was not difficult on this occasion to detect in the fluttering lights and shades of his countenance an expression mixed of astonishment, gratification, and confusion, very natural to a poor bhearer who had never before been taken by a Sahib in the very bosom of his family. There was something at once pitiful and comical in the subdued "fidget" with which, applying his joined palms to his forehead, and lowly louting, he made his most obsequious salaam again and again.
"Master have command for Karlee? Any wrong thing happen, master? Dhobee[15] come? Mehtur[16] not sweep room? Punka-wallah[17] run away? Sahibs make visit? Kitmudgar not—"
"No, no; everything all right and proper. I have come to bring good wishes and a lucky eye to all this house, and a small salaamee, a pretty gift, for the new Suntoshum,—the jewel that hangs on its mother's bosom."
"Ah! master make slave too much happy honor. Master's pitiful graciousness all same Barra Lard Sahib" (the Governor-General). "Poor, foolish bhearer kiss master's feet."
"Well, another time for that. Lead the way now, and let me make my salaam to your coolest mat and your largest punka, for I am hot and tired."
"S'pose Sahib like, Belatta pawnee have got?"
"Acha; Belatta pawnee lou."[18]
Here, indeed, was a wide stride in the direction of refinement and Evangelism! Soda-water in a bhearer's house! Karlee had not served the Sahibs, and observed "Young Bengal" baboos, in vain. From Belatta pawnee to Isherryshrob and Simpkin (sherry and champagne) is not far, and well does Young Bengal know the way.
A quick glance, as I passed in, informed me that Karlee's house consisted of four rooms; probably two sleeping apartments, one for the men and another for the women, a kitchen, and a common room for meals, family chats, and visitors. Like all true Hindoo houses, uncorrupted by the European innovations which snobbish baboos affect, it contained but few articles of furniture, and those of the simplest and most indispensable description,—nothing for luxury, nothing for show. To the outfit of the poorest laborer's domicile he added little more than a white cloth spread over checkered Chinese matting, to stand for chair, table, and bed; a cushion or two to recline upon; a few earthen vessels of the better quality, to hold rice or water; a brass lamp for cocoa-nut oil; several more primitive lamps rudely made of the shell of the cocoa-nut; an iron mortar and pestle—foreign, of course—for pounding curry; a couple of charpoys, or wooden cots; a few brass lotahs, or drinking-cups; and two or three hubble-bubbles. But the crowning glories were a Chinese extension chair, of bamboo and wicker, and quite a pretty hookah,—both evidently dedicated to company occasions. These were all that I could see in the two rooms to which I was admitted, and these were no doubt the very splendors of Karlee's establishment. If he had been a rich Anglicized baboo, he would have had a profusion of hot, tawdry chairs, and a vulgar-gorgeous cramming of gilt-edged tables, sweaty red sofas, coarse pictures in overdone frames, Bowery mirrors, and Brummagem chandeliers.
Comfortably installed in the Chinese chair, and refreshed with the Belatta pawnee, I proceeded to take notes. Karlee had discarded his working dress for festal attire,—the difference being one of quality merely. Round his waist he wore a dhotee of coarse muslin, tight above, so as to form the kummerbund, or waistband, but thence falling in loose and not ungraceful folds down the legs to the ankles. Over his body another ample mantle, in no respect differing from the dhotee as to texture or color, was wrapped like a broad scarf, and carelessly flung over the shoulder in the fashion of a Highland plaid. In the "cold" season he would draw this over his head for a hood. These sheets of cloth are worn just as they come from the loom; needle or pin has never touched them, and they are held in place by tucking the ends under the folds.
Being a Hindoo gentleman of the old school, Karlee repudiated the headdress at home; for the puggree, at least in its present form, was adopted from the Mohammedan conquerors, and is, historically, a badge of subjugation. So when he met me at the door his head was uncovered; but I had no sooner crossed the threshold than he made haste to don his flat turban,—reflecting, perhaps, that I had never seen him without it, and might resent his bare head as an indignity. Of course his feet were unshod. To have worn his sandals in my presence would have been a flagrant insult; but on the porch I espied those two queer clogs of wood, shaped to the sole of the foot, and having no other fastening than an impracticable-looking knob, to be held between the toes.
This is the orthodox Hindoo dress; but the costume for public occasions of many Hindoos of rank has been for a quarter of a century in a state of transition from Mohammedan to British. By way of turbans, loose trousers, Cashmere shawls, and embroidered slippers, they are marching on toward pantaloons, waistcoats, shoes and stockings, stove-pipe hats, and tail-coats. A baboo of superlative fashion, according to the code of Young Bengal, paid me a visit one day in a state of confirmed "pants" and "Congress gaiters"; and, on seating himself, he took off his turban and held it on his knee. I need hardly say that he was a fool and an infidel. And I have seen an intrepid buffoon of this class in an English shirt, which he wore over his pantaloons, and hanging down to his knees. But, after all, these clumsy desecrations are confined to a small minority of the population, if not strictly to that "set" which is brought most closely in contact with Europeans; such as a few native gentlemen in the Presidency capitals, some of the pleaders and principal employés of the higher courts, not a few of the teachers and pupils in the Anglo-Indian schools, and many of the native Christians.
Karlee's politeness, superior to that of the more servile bhearers, was a fair type of the pure Hindoo manners of that well-bred middle class which clings with orthodox conservatism to its dear traditions, and spurns as unconstitutional all upstart and dandy amendments of the old social and religious law. He had invariably one salutation for an equal,—the right hand gently raised, and the head as gently inclined to meet it; another, for what I may term a familiar superior (such as myself),—the hands joined palm to palm, and so applied twice or thrice to the forehead; and still other, and more and more reverential, ceremonials for gooroos, Brahmins, holy sages, and princes,—the brow touching the ground, or the whole body prostrated.
If it was an indispensable requirement of respect that he should leave his slippers at the door on entering any house, it was no less important that he should resume them on taking his leave. To have appeared in public with uncovered feet would have been a gross breach of propriety. Fine old Hindoo gentlemen, all of the olden time, find it difficult to express their mingled contempt, indignation, and regret for the innovation which substitutes the Cheapside shoe for the ceremonial slipper, or permits the wearing of the latter in a Sahib's office or drawing-room. It shows, they say, that the natives are losing their respect for the Sahibs. And yet the British authorities stupidly sanction it, even set the seal of fashion upon it, by allowing natives of rank, who visit Government House, to appear in the presence of the Governor-General, and the élite of the European society, in their slippers. The fact is, these impious disturbings of the established order of things are most shocking to the well-regulated heathen mind, to which no spectacle can be more monstrous than that of a Hindoo of good caste and old family performing with some arf-and-arf Cockney visitor a duet on the pump-handle, and directly afterward wreathing his apoplectic neck with flowers, and sprinkling his asthmatic waistcoat with rose-water. You see they both back "Young Bengal" in the Barrackpore races.
When Karlee visits his friend the sircar, he is scrupulous not to make his parting salaam until his host has given the customary signal. He waits to be dismissed, or rather to receive permission to withdraw. The etiquette supposes that his inclination is to prolong the enjoyment he derives from the society of so agreeable a gentleman; it is, therefore, not until rose-water has been presented to him, or betel-leaf, or sweetmeats, that he will venture to take his sandals and his leave.
The style of Hindoo politeness is format and imperturbably grave, utterly devoid of heartiness or impulsiveness; and the cordiality which distinguishes the intercourse of American friends appears to the native gentleman boisterous and vulgar. I never saw Karlee laugh; and if I had happened to snatch him from sudden death by fire or water, I think he would have acknowledged the obligation with precisely the same mathematical salaam, or at most the same sententious obsequiousness, with which he accepted a buksheesh of a half-rupee; and yet in both good-humor and gratitude he was as cheerful and as worthy as the most giddy and gushing of damsels. But I must acknowledge there was something truly corpsy in the solemnity with which he would "lay out" a clean shirt. Even so, in the midst of all the jolly uproar of a mess dinner, our Kitmudgars would stand in grim deadliness at our backs, like so many executioners, only waiting for a sign from the ruthless Kousomar, who was just then horribly popping the champagne corks, to behead us,—each his own doomed Sahib.
No wonder Karlee was a gentleman; for the Vishnu Pooran was his Chesterfield, and he had its precepts by heart. "A wise man," he would say to the pert young Kitmudgars, as they bragged and wrangled, between their hubble-bubbles, on the back stairs,—"a wise man will never address another with the least unkindness; but will always speak gently, and with truth, and never make public another's faults. He will never engage in a dispute with either his superiors or his inferiors: controversy and marriage are permitted only between equals. Nor will he ever associate with wicked persons: half an instant is the utmost time he should allow himself to remain in their company. A wise man, when sitting, will not put one foot over the other, nor stretch forth his foot in the presence of a superior; but he will sit with modesty, in the posture styled virasama. Above all, he will not expectorate at the time of eating, offering oblations, or repeating prayers, or in the presence of any respectable person; nor will he ever cross the shadow of a venerable man or of an idol."
For those who imagine that polygamy is a popular institution in Hindostan, the answer of a Hill-man to a Mofussil magistrate should suffice. "Do you keep more than one wife?" "We can hardly feed one; why should we keep more?" In fact, the privilege of maintaining a plurality of wives is restricted to a very few,—those only of the largest means and smallest scruples,—except in the case of Kooleen Brahmins, that superlative aristocracy of caste which is supposed to be descended from certain illustrious families who settled in Bengal several centuries ago. Wealthy Hindoos of low degree eagerly aspire to the honor of mixing their puddle blood with the quintessentially clarified fluid that glorifies the circulatory systems of these demigods, and the result is a very pretty and profitable branch of the Brahmin business,—Kooleen marrying sometimes as many as fifty of such nut-brown maids of baser birth, in consideration of a substantial dowry attached to each bride, and a solemn obligation, accepted and signed by the paternal Puddle, forever to feed at home her and her improved progeny. So the fifty continue to roost in the old paternal coops, while Kooleen, like a pampered Brahmapootra, struts, in pompous patronage, from one to the other, his sense of duty satisfied when he has left a crow and a cackle behind him. It is said that many fine fowls of the Brahmin breed, who do not happen to be Kooleens, complain of the monopoly.
So Karlee had but one wife,—the handy, thrifty ayah already mentioned. She was nine and he twelve years old when they were betrothed, and they never saw each other until they were married. A professional match-maker, or go-between,—female, of course,—was employed by the parents to negotiate terms and arrange the preliminaries; and when horoscopes had been compared and the stars found all right, with a little consequential chaffering, the hymeneal instruments were "executed." There was no trouble on the score of caste, both families being soodra; otherwise, the sensitive social balance would have had to be adjusted by the payment of a sum of money. When the skirts of the bride and bridegroom had been fastened together with blades of the sweet-scented cusa grass,—when he had said, "May that heart which is thine become my heart, and this heart which is mine become thy heart,"—when, hand in hand, they had stept into the seventh of the mystic circles,—Mr. and Mrs. Karlee were an accomplished Hindoo fact.
To the parents on both sides, the wedding was a costly performance. There were the irrepressible and voracious Brahmins to propitiate, the hungry friends of both families to feast for three days, the musicians and the nautch-girls and the tamasha-wallahs[19] to be bountifully buksheeshed; and when the bridal palanquin was borne homeward, it was a high-priced indispensability that the procession should satisfy the best soodra society,—
"With the yellow torches gleaming,
And the scarlet mantles streaming,
And the canopy above
Swaying as they slowly move."
Karlee has assured me that neither his father nor his father-in-law, although both were soodras of fair credit and condition, ever quite recovered from the financial shock of that "awspidges okashn."
A Hindoo very rarely pronounces the name of his wife, even to his most intimate friends,—to strangers, and especially foreigners, never; on the part of a native visitor it is the etiquette to ignore her altogether, and for the husband to allude to her familiarly is an unpardonable breach of decorum. When, therefore, Karlee, to gratify my friendly curiosity, led in the happy grandmother, I felt that I was the recipient of an extraordinary mark of respect and confidence, involving a generous sacrifice of prejudice. As she made her modest salaam, and, in the manner of a shy child, sank to the floor in the habitual posture of an ayah, I had before me the well-preserved remains of a Hindoo beauty, according to the standard of the Shasters,—a placid, reposeful woman, almost fat, with rather delicate features of Rajpoot fairness, the complexion of high caste, wealth, and ease, such as her less-favored sisters vainly strive to imitate with a sort of saffron rouge. Her expression was chaste and gentle, her voice dulcet; and to the practice of carrying light burdens on her head she was indebted for a carriage erect and graceful. On Broadway or Tremont Street, Mrs. Karlee would have passed for a very comely colored woman. If she was not like Rama, fair as the jasmine, or the moon, or the fibres of the lotos, neither had she, like Krishna, the complexion of a cloud. If she was not so delicate as that dainty beauty who bewitched the hard heart of Surajah Dowlah, and weighed but sixty-four pounds, neither did she reproduce the unwieldy charms of that Venus of one of the Shasters "whose gait was the gait of a drunken elephant or a goose." A prudent man, says the Vishnoo Pooran, will not marry a woman who has a beard, or one who has thick ankles, or one who speaks with a shrill voice, or one who croaks like a raven, or one whose eyebrows meet, or one whose teeth resemble tusks. And Karlee was a prudent man.
From the extravagant and clumsy complications, the stupid caprices and discords, and studious indecencies of our women's fashions, to the prudent simplicity, the unconscious poetry and picturesqueness and musically blended modesty and freedom of the good ayah's unchangeable attire, my thought reverts with a mingled sense of refreshment and regret. A single web of cloth, eight or nine yards long, having a narrow blue border, was drawn in self-forming folds around her shoulders and bosom, and hung down to her feet,—the material muslin, the texture somewhat coarse, the color white. No dressmaker had ever played fantastic tricks with it: it was pure and simple in its entireness as it came from the loom.
Other women, of the laboring class, and very poor, passed to and fro on the street, half naked, their legs and shoulders bare, and with only a piece of dirty cloth—blue, red, or yellow—around the loins and hips; while here and there some superfine baboo's wife floated past in her close palanquin, or sat with her children on the flat roof of her house, or peeped through her narrow windows into the street, arrayed in fancy bodice and petticoat,—Mohammedan fashion.
But the simplicity of Mrs. Karlee's attire began and ended with her drapery. Her ornaments were cumbersome, clumsy, and grotesque. On her arms and ankles were many fetter-like bands of silver and copper; rude rings of gold and silver adorned her fingers and great toes; small silver coins were twisted in her hair; and the naturally delicate outline of her lips was deformed by a broad gold ring, which she wore, like a fractious ox, in her nose. This latter vanity is as precious as it is ugly; in some of the minor castes its absence is regarded as a badge of widowhood; and for no inducement would the pious ayah have removed it from its place, even for an instant. Had it fallen, by any dreadful chance, the house would have been filled with horror and lamentation. The half-naked wife of my syce rejoices in a nose-ring of brass or pewter, and her wrists and ankles are gay with hoops of painted shell-lac; and even she stains her eyelids with lampblack, and tinges her nails with henna. Much lovelier was our pretty ayah in her maidenhood, when her dainty bosom was decked with shells and sweet-scented flowers, and her raven hair lighted up with sprays of the Indian jasmine, which first she had offered to Seeta.
But that reminds me that, when I approached her, and presented the string of corals, my small salaamee, and bade Karlee tell her that it was for the baby,—for she understood not a word of English,—and that I wished him happy stars and a good name, riches and honors, and a houseful of sons,—she uttered not a word; but with eyes brimming with gratitude, flattered to tears, by a sudden graceful movement she touched my foot with her hand and immediately laid it on her head,—and then, with many shy and mute, but eloquent salaams, retired. It is difficult to imagine such a woman scolding and slang-whanging as low Hindoo women do, accompanying with passionate attitudes and gestures a reckless torrent of words, and fitting the foulest action to the most scandalous epithet.
The wives of the native servants are generally industrious. This one, Karlee boasted, was a notable housewife. Before she went out to service as an ayah she had cleaned the rice, pounded the curry, cooked all the meals, brought water from the tank in earthen jars on her head, swept and scrubbed the floor, cultivated a small kitchen garden, "shopped" at the bazaar, spun endless supplies of cotton thread on a very primitive reel, consisting of a piece of wire with a ball of clay at the end of it, which she twirled with one hand while she fed it with the other; and every morning she bathed in the Hooghly, and returned home before daybreak. Sewing and knitting were unknown arts to her,—she had no use for either; and her washing and ironing were done by a hired dhobee.
True, it was not permitted to her to eat with her husband; when Karlee dined she sat at the respectful orthodox distance, and waited; and if at any time they walked out together, ayah must keep her legal place in the rear. Saith the Shaster, "Is it not the practice of women of immaculate chastity to eat after their lords have eaten, to sleep only after they have slept, and to rise from sleep before them?" And again, "Let a wife who wishes to perform sacred ablution wash the feet of her lord, and drink the water." Nevertheless, ayah exercised an influence over her husband as decided as it was wholesome; she did not hesitate to rebuke him when occasion required; and in all that related to the moral government of her children she was free to dispute his authority, and try parental conclusions with him,—kindly but firmly. As for "the tyrannical immuring of the Oriental female," the cruel caging of the pretty birds who are supposed to be forever longing and pining for the gossip of the ghaut and the bustle of the bazaar, the only fault she had to find with it was that she did not get enough of it. The well-trained Hindoo woman has been taught to regard such seclusion as her most charming compliment, and a precious proof of her husband's affection; to be kept jealously veiled from the staring world, is associated in her mind with ideas of wealth and rank,—it is the very aristocracy of fashion.
According to the Code of Menyu, "a believer in Scripture may receive pure knowledge even from a soodra, a lesson of the highest virtue even from a chandala, and a woman bright as a gem even from the lowest family." So if Karlee's wife, instead of being of the same social rank as himself, had come of basest caste, she would still have been a treasure. Soon after she had retired, she gently pushed into the room, to pay his respects to the Sahib, a shy little boy of five years, whom Karlee presented to me as the child of his only son, a bhearer in the service of an English officer stationed at Fort William. The mother had died in blessing her husband with this bright little puttro. In costume he was the exact miniature of his grandfather, except that he wore no puggree, and his hair was cut short round the forehead in a quaint frill, like the small boys one sees running about the streets in Orissa. His ankles, too, were loaded with massive silver rings, which noticeably impeded the childish freedom of his steps. When he has begun to understand what the word "wife" means, these must be laid aside. In his manners, likewise, little Karlee was the very tautology of his namesake with the gray moustache,—the same wary self-possession, the same immovable gravity and nice decorum. Like a little courtier, he made his small salaam, and through his grandfather replied to some playful questions I addressed to him, with good emphasis and discretion, without either awkwardness or boldness, and especially without a smile. When I gave him a rupee, he construed it as the customary signal, and with another small salaam immediately dismissed himself.
Little Karlee must have taken lessons in deportment with his primal pap; and in India all good little boys, who hope to go to heaven when they die, keep their noses clean, and never romp or whistle. As to girls it matters less; the midwife gets only half price for consummating that sort of blunder; for when you are dead only a son can carry you out and bury you dacent,—no daughter, though she pray with the power and perseverance of the Seven Penitents, can procure you a respectable metempsychosis.
So far little Karlee had been lucky. This house, where he was born, was lucky,—no one had ever died in it. When his dear mother could not spin any more, they carried her to the Hooghly on a charpoy, and she had breathed her last on the banks of the sacred river. Besides, his grandfather had immediately stuck up a cooking-pot, striped with perpendicular white lines, on a pole at the side of the house; so he had never been in any danger from malicious incantations and the Evil Eye. His education had been begun on a propitious day, else he might have died or turned out a dunce. The very day he was born, a Brahmin—O so pious!—had hung a charm round his neck, and only charged grandpa fifty rupees for it; when he went to the bazaar with his grandmother he was always dressed in rags, to avert envy, and no one out of the family knew his real name except his gooroo; all the other boys, and the neighbors, called him Teencowry (three cowries[20]),—such a nice mean name against spells and cross-eyed people! Once a strange Melican Sahib had said, "Hello, Buster!" to him; but he wasn't at all frightened, for his gooroo had taught him how to say a holy mautra[21] backwards; and when the Melican Sahib passed on, he spat on his shadow and said it. Last week a lizard dropped on his foot, and yesterday he saw a cow on his right hand three times,—he had always been so lucky!
Now, time, place, and mood being favorable, I called for the company hookah, and, extending the long Chinese chair, smoked myself to sleep under the punka. My nap was a long one, and when I awoke there watched and waited Karlee, tenderly patient, with the fly-flapper.
In the hospitalities thus far so handsomely extended to me, the reader will recognize and appreciate an extraordinary display of liberal ideas, for which, however, considering the sound common sense of my affectionate old bhearer, I was not altogether unprepared; but when, his little grandson being gone, he conducted me into another room, to partake of what he humbly styled a chota khana, a trifle of luncheon, my astonishment exceeded my gratification. I doubt if such a thing had ever before happened in the life of a bhearer.
On the floor a broad sheet, of spotless whiteness, was spread, and beside it a narrow mattress of striped seersucker, very clean and cool, and with a double cushion at the head to support the elbow; on this my host invited me to recline. Here then were table and chair, but as yet the board was bare. Presently little Karlee reappeared, bringing a great round hand-punka, formed of a single huge palm-leaf, and, standing behind my shoulder, began to fan me solemnly. Immediately there was a subdued and mysterious clapping of hands, and the old man, going to the door, received, from behind the red curtain which hung across it, a bowl of coarse unglazed earthenware, but smoking and savory, which he set before me, together with a smaller bowl of the same material, empty; and to my lively surprise these were followed by English bunns and pickles, a jar of chutney, a bottle of Allsop's ale, my own silver beer-mug, knives and forks, table and dessert spoons, fruit-knife, and napkin,—all from our quarters in Cossitollah, two miles away. By what conjuration and mighty magic Karlee had procured these from my kitmudgar without a chittee, or order, I have not yet discovered.
The tureen contained delicious Mulligatawney soup, of which, as Karlee well knew, I was inordinately fond; and as he opened the ale he modestly congratulated himself on my vigorous enjoyment of it.
After the soup came curried prawns, a very piquant dish, in eminent repute among the Sahibs, and a famous appetizer. Tonic, hot, and pungent as it is, with spices, betel, and chillies, it is hard to imagine what the torpid livers of the Civil Service would do without their rousing curry.
The curry was followed by a tender bouilli of kid, sauced with a delicate sort of onions stewed in ghee (boiled butter), and flanked with boiled rice, sweet pumpkin, and fried bananas, all served on green leaves. Next came pine-apple, covered with sherry-wine and sugar, in company with English walnuts and cheese; and, last of all, sweetmeats and coffee,—the former a not unpleasant compound of ground rice and sugar with curds and the crushed kernel of the cocoa-nut; the coffee was served in a diminutive gourd, and was not sweetened. Last of the last, the hookah.
And all these wonders had been wrought since the grateful ayah retired with the corals! But then the bazaar was close at hand, and in the sircar's house help was handy.
Whilst I kanahed[22] and smoked, Karlee, humbly "squatting" at my back, allowed me to draw from him all that I have here related of his house and family, and much more that I have not space to relate. Of course, he could not have shared the repast with me,—all the holy water of Ganges could never have washed out so deep a defilement,—but he accompanied my hookah with his hubble-bubble. The reader has observed that, although the viands were choice enough, they were laid on the cheapest pottery, and even on leaves, that the plate from which I ate was of unglazed earthenware, and that the coffee was served in a gourd. This was in order that they might be at once destroyed. By no special dispensation could those vessels ever again be purified for the use of a respectable Hindoo; even a pariah would have felt insulted if he had been asked to eat from them; and if the knives and forks and spoons had not been my own, they must have shared the fate of the platters. But this prejudice must be taken in a Pickwickian sense,—it covered no objection simply personal to the Sahib. In some castes it is forbidden to eat from any plate twice, even in the strictest privacy of the family; and many natives, however wealthy, scrupulously insist upon leaves. All respectable Hindoos lift their food with their fingers, using neither knife, fork, nor spoon; and for this purpose they employ the right hand only, the left being reserved for baser purposes. In drinking water, many of them will not allow the lotah to touch the lips; but, throwing the head back, and holding the vessel at arm's length on high, with an odd expertness they let the water run into their mouths. The sect of Ramanujas obstinately refuse to sit down to a meal while any one is standing by or looking on; nor will they chew betel in company with a man of low caste. Ward has written, "If a European of the highest rank touch the food of a Hindoo of the lowest caste, the latter will instantly throw it away, although he may not have another morsel to allay the pangs of hunger";—but this is true only of certain very strait sects. There are numerous sects that admit proselytes from every caste; but at the same time they will not partake of food, except with those of their own religious party. "Here," says Kerr, "the spirit of sect has supplanted even the spirit of caste,"—as at the temple of Juggernath in Orissa, where the pilgrims of all castes take their khana in common.
At our quarters in Cossitollah even this progressive Karlee will not taste of the food which has been served at our mess-table, though it be returned to the kitchen untouched. But at least he is consistent; for neither will he take medicine from the hand of a Sahib, however ill he may be; nor have I ever known him to decline or postpone the performance of this or that duty because it was Sunday,—as many knavish bhearers do when they have set their hearts on a cock-fight. To compound for sins one is inclined to, by damning those one has no mind to, it is not indispensable that one should be a Christian.
The amiable Mr. James Kerr, of the Hindoo College of Calcutta, has contrived an ingenious and plausible apology for the constitutional (or geographical) laziness of Bengalese servants. He says: "A love of repose may be considered one of the most striking features in the character of the people of India. The Hindoos may be said to have deified this state. Their favorite notion of a Supreme Being is that of one who reposes in himself, in a dream of absolute quiescence. This idea is, doubtless, in the first instance, a reflection of their own character; but, in whatever way it originated, it tends to sanctify in their eyes a state of repose. When removed from this world of care, their highest hope is to become a part of the great Quiescent. It will naturally appear to them the best preparation for the repose of a future life to cultivate repose in this." Therefore, if your kitmudgar, nodding behind your chair, permits his astonished fly-flapper to become a part of the great Quiescent, or if your punka-wallah, having subsided into a comatose beatitude, suddenly invites his compliant machine to repose in himself, in a dream of absolute stagnation, with the thermometer at 120° outside the refrigerator, you must not say, "Damn that boy,—he's asleep again!"—but patiently survey and intelligently admire the spiritual processes by which an exalted sentient force prepares itself for the repose of a future life. But our reckless Karlee took no thought for the everlasting rest into which his soul should enter "when removed from this world of care," according to the ingenious psychological system of the amiable Kerr Sahib; for when he had anything to do, he kept on doing it until it was done, and when he caught the punka-wallah reposing in a dream of absolute quiescence, he bumped his head against the wall, and called him a sooa, and a banchut, and a junglee-wallah.[23]
Though possessed of a lively imagination and all his race's sympathy with what is vast, though he saw nothing extravagant in the Hindoo chronology, nor aught that was monstrous in Hindoo mythology, Karlee yet served to illustrate the arguments of those who contend that Hindoos need not necessarily be all boasters, servile liars, and flatterers. He was not forever saying, "Master very wise man; master all time do good; master all time ispeak right." He never told me that my words were pearls and diamonds that I dropped munificently from my mouth. He never called me "your highness," or said I was his father and mother, and the lord of the world; and if I said at noonday, "It is night," he did not exclaim, "Behold the moon and stars!" He never tried to prove to me that the earth revolved on its axis once in twenty-four hours by my favor. "What! dost thou think him a Christian that he would go about to deceive thee?" No, he was as proudly truthful as a Rajpoot, as frank and manly as a Goorkah, and as honest as an up-country Durwan.
Good by, my best of bhearers. To the new baby a good name, and to the faithful ayah enviable enlargement of liver! Khodá rukho ki beebi-ka kulle-jee bhee itui burri hoga![24]—I owe thee for a day of hospitable edifications; and when thou comest to my country, thou shalt find thy Heathen at Home.