Gopal is a man of substance, owning many buffaloes and immensely fat Guzerat cows, with prodigious humps and large pendent ears. His family, having been connected for many generations with the sacred animal, he enjoys a certain consciousness of moral respectability, like a man whose uncles are deans or canons. In my mind, he is always associated rather with his buffaloes, those great, unwieldy, hairless, slate-coloured docile, intelligent antediluvians. [Picture: Home butter making] THE MISCELLANEOUS WALLAHS. [Picture: The Kalai-wallah] I have yielded to the claim of the _doodwallah_ to be reckoned among the _nowkers_. His right is more than doubtful, and I will yield no further. Nevertheless, there is a cluster of petty dependents, a nebula of minor satellites, which have us for the focus of their orbit, and which cannot be left out of a comprehensive account of our system. Whence, for example, is that raucus stridulation which sets every tooth on edge and sends a rheumatic shiver up my spine? “It is only the _Kalai-wallah_,” says the boy, and points to a muscular black man, very nearly in the garb of a Grecian athlete, standing with both feet in one of my largest cooking pots. He grasps a post with both hands, and swings his whole frame fiercely from side to side with a circular motion, like the balance wheel of a watch. He seems to have a rough cloth and sand under his feet, so I suppose this is only his energetic way of scouring the pot preparatory to tinning it, for the _Kalai-wallah_ is the “tin-man,” whose beneficent office it is to avert death by verdigris and salts of copper from you and your family. His assistant, a semi-nude, fleshless youth, has already extemporized a furnace of clay in the ground hard by, and is working a huge pair of clumsy bellows. Around him are all manner of copper kitchen utensils, _handies_, or _deckshies_, kettles, frying-pans, and what not, and there are also on the ground some rings of _kalai_, commonly called tin; but pure tin is an expensive metal, and I do not think it is any part of the _Kalai-wallah’s_ care to see that you are not poisoned with lead. One notable peculiarity there is in this _Kalai-wallah_, or tin-man, which deserves record, namely, that he pays no _dustooree_ to any man. I take it as sufficient evidence of this fact that, though even the _matie_ could tell you that the pots ought to be tinned once a month, neither the butler nor the cook ever seems to remember when the day comes round. This is a matter which you must see to personally. Contrast with this the case of the _Nalbund_, the clink of whose hammer in the early morning tells that the 15th of the month has dawned. His portable anvil is already in the ground, and he is hammering the shoes into shape after a fashion; but he is not very particular about this, for if the shoe does not fit the hoof he can always cut the hoof to fit the shoe. This is an