[Picture: A happy patient] But I must return to the Barber. The natives call him _hujjam_. He has been bred so true for a score or so of centuries that shaving must be an instinct with him now. His right hand is as delicate an organ as a foxhound’s nose. I believe that, when inebriated, he goes on shaving, just as a toad deprived of its brain will walk and eat and scratch its nose. If you put a jagged piece of tin into the hand of a baby _hujjam_, he will scrape his little sister’s face with it. In India, as you know, every caste has its own “points,” and you can distinguish a Barber as easily as a _dhobie_ or a Dorking hen. He is a sleek, fair-complexioned man, dressed in white, with an ample red turban, somewhat oval in shape, like a sugared almond. He wears large gold earrings in the upper part of his ears, and has a sort of false stomach, which, at a distance, gives him an aldermanic figure, but proves, on a nearer view, to be made of leather, and to have many compartments, filled with razors, scissors, soap, brush, comb, mirror, tweezers, earpicks, and other instruments of a more or less surgical character; for he is, indeed, a surgeon, and especially an aurist and narist. When he takes a Hindoo head into his charge, he does not confine himself to the chin or scalp, but renovates it all over. The happy patient enjoys the operation, sitting proudly in a public place. When a Barber devotes himself to European heads he rises in the social scale. If he has any real talent for his profession, he soon rises to the rank and title of Tom, and may eventually be presented with a small hot-water jug, bearing an inscription to the effect that it is a token of the respect and esteem in which he was held by the officers of the —th Regiment at the station of Daree-nai-hona. This is equivalent to a C. I. E., but is earned by merit. In truth, Tom is a great institution. He opens the day along with tea and hot toast and the _Daree-nai-hona Chronicle_, but we throw aside the _Chronicle_. It is all very well if you want to know which band will play at the band-stand this evening, and the leading columns are occasionally excruciatingly good, when a literary corporal of the Fusiliers discusses the political horizon, or unmasks the _Herald_, pointing out with the most pungent sarcasm how “our virtuous contemporary puts his hands in his breeches pockets, like a crocodile, and sheds tears;” but during the parade season the corporal writes little, and articles by the regular staff, upon the height to which cantonment hedges should be allowed to grow, are apt to be dull. For news we depend on Tom. He appears reticent at first, but be patient. Let him put the soap on, and then tap him gently. “Well, Tom, what news this morning?” “No news, sar.” After a long pause, “Commissioner Saheb coming to-morrow.” “To-morrow? No, he is not coming for three weeks.” “To-morrow coming. Not telling anybody; quietly coming.” “Why?”