Maria Graham tells us that in her time “the _Dirdjees_, or tailors, in Bombay” were “Hindoos of respectable caste,” but in these days the Goanese, who has not capacity to be a butler or cook, becomes a _Dirzee_, and in Bombay I have seen Bunniah _Dirzees_. Hurree can hold his own against these, I doubt not, but the advancing tide of civilization is surely crumbling down his foundations. It is not only the “Europe” shop in Bombay that takes the bread out of his month, but in the smallest and most remote stations, Narayen, “Tailor, Outfitter, Milliner, and Dressmaker,” hangs out his sign-board, and under it pale, consumptive youths of the Shimpee caste bend over their work by lamplight, and sing the song of the shirt to the whirr-rr-rr of sewing machines. And as Hurree goes by on his way home, his prophetic soul tells him that his son will not live the happy and independent life which has fallen to his lot. But he has a bulwark still in the _dhobie_, for the “Tailor and Outfitter” will not repair frayed cuffs, and the sewing machine cannot put on buttons. And Hurree is not ungrateful, for I observe that, when the _dhobie_ delivers up your clothes in a state which requires the _Dirzee_, the _Dirzee_ always gives them back in a condition which demands the _dhobie_. [Picture: The Dirzee] THE MALEE. “Another custom is their sitting always on the ground with their knees up to their chins, which I know not how to account for.”—_Daniel Johnson_. [Picture: The Malee] I HAVE been watching Thomas Otway, gardener. His coat hangs on a tree hard by, and he, standing in his shirt sleeves, is slaughtering regiments of weeds with a long hoe. When they are all uprooted and prostrate, he changes his weapon for a fork, with which he tosses them about and shakes them free of soil and gathers them into heaps. Then he brings a wheel-barrow, and, piling them into it until it can hold no more, goes off at a trot. I am told his only fault is that he is _slow_.