[Picture: The Bheestee] THE _malee_ has an ally called the _Bheestee_. If you ask, Who is the _Bheestee_? I will tell you. _Behisht_ in the Persian tongue means Paradise, and a _Bihishtee_ is, therefore, an inhabitant of Paradise, a cherub, a seraph, an angel of mercy. He has no wings; the painters have misconceived him; but his back is bowed down with the burden of a great goat-skin swollen to bursting with the elixir of life. He walks the land when the heaven above him is brass and the earth iron, when the trees and shrubs are languishing and the last blade of grass has given up the struggle for life, when the very roses smell only of dust, and all day long the roaring “dust devils” waltz about the fields, whirling leaf and grass and corn stalk round and round and up and away into the regions of the sky; and he unties a leather thong which chokes the throat of his goat-skin just where the head of the poor old goat was cut off, and straight-way, with a life-reviving gurgle, the stream called _thunda panee_ gushes forth, and plant and shrub lift up their heads and the garden smiles again. The dust also on the roads is laid and a grateful incense rises from the ground, the sides of the water chatty grow dark and moist and cool themselves in the hot air, and through the dripping interstices of the _khuskhus_ tattie a chilly fragrance creeps into the room, causing the mercury in the thermometer to retreat from its proud place. Nay, the seraph finds his way to your very bath-room, and discharging a cataract into the great tub, leaves it heaving like the ocean after a storm. When you follow him there, you will thank that nameless poet who gave our humble Aquarius the title he bears. Surely in the world there can be no luxury like an Indian “tub” after a long march, or a morning’s shooting, in the month of May. I know of none. Wallace says that to eat a _durian_ is a new sensation, worth a voyage to the East to experience. “A rich, butterlike custard, highly flavoured with almonds, gives the best general idea of it, but intermingled with it come wafts of flavour which call to mind cream cheese, onion sauce, brown sherry, and other incongruities.” If this is true, then eating a _durian_ must, in its way, be something like having a tub. That certainly is a new sensation. I cannot tell what gives the best general idea of it, but there are mingled with it many wafts of a vigorous enjoyment, which touch you, I think, at a higher point in your nature than cream cheese or onion sauce. There is first the enfranchisement of your steaming limbs from gaiter and shooting boot, buckskin and flannel; then the steeping of your sodden head in the pellucid depth, with bubaline snortings and expirations of satisfaction; then, as the first cold stream from the “tinpot” courses down your spine, what electric thrills start from a dozen ganglia and flush your whole nervous system with new life! Finally, there is the plunge and the