[Picture: The body-guard] OUR _Chupprassees_ are the outward expression of our authority, and the metre-gauge of our importance. By them the untutored mind of the poor Indian is enabled to estimate the amount of reverence due to each of us. This is the first purpose for which we are provided with Chupprassees. The second is that they may deliver our commands, post our letters, and escort the coming generation of Government servants in their little perambulators. As the number required for the first purpose usually far exceeds the number required for the second, there is danger of Satan finding mischief for their idle hands to do, and it becomes our duty to ward off this danger by occupying their hands with something which is not mischief. This we do faithfully, and the _Chupprassee_ always reminds me of those tools we see advertised, which combine hammer, pincers, turnscrew, chisel, foot-rule, hatchet, file, toothpick, and life preserver. Mrs. Smart bewailed the bygone day when every servant in her house was a Government _Chupprassee_ except the _khansamah_ and a Portuguese _ayah_. I did not live in that day, but in my own I have seen the _Chupprassee_ discharge many functions. He is an expert _shikaree_, sometimes a good tailor or barber, not a bad cook at a pinch, a handy table boy, and, above all an unequalled child’s servant. There can be little doubt, it the truth were told, that Little Henry’s bearer was a _Chupprassee_. He also milks the cow, waters the garden, catches butterflies, skins birds, blows eggs, and runs after tennis balls. If you ask himself what his duties are, he will reply promptly that it is his duty to wear the sircar’s belt and to “be present.” And the camel is not more wonderfully fitted for the desert than is Luxumon for the discharge of these solemn responsibilities. He is like a carriage clock, able to sleep in any conceivable position; and such is his mental constitution that, when not sleeping, he is able to “be present” hour after hour without feeling any desire for change of occupation. _Ennui_ never troubles him, time never hangs heavy on his hands; he sits as patiently as a cow and chews the cud of _pan suparee_, and he bespatters the walls with a sanguinary pigment produced by the mastication of the same. He needs no food, but he goes out to drink water thirty-five times a day, and, when he returns refreshed, a certain acrid odour penetrates every crevice of the house, almost dislodging the rats and exterminating the lesser vermin. To liken it to the smell of tobacco would give civilized mankind a claim against me for defamation of character. [Picture: An unequalled child’s servant]