Like other vermin of his class, he is most apt to attach himself to the "weaker vessels" of humanity, with whom he is generally a prodigious favorite. He is not, certainly, indebted to his personal advantages for this favor, for a more hideously ugly race of men is seldom met with. As if nature had not made him sufficiently repulsive, he heightens his hideousness by encircling his eyes with bands of white paint; daubing his cheeks a rich mustard yellow: a white streak runs along the ridge of his nose, and another forms a circle round his mouth: his ribs are indicated by corresponding bars of white paint, which give a highly venerable cross-bones effect to his breast. When I add, that he wears no clothes, and that the use of soap is no part of his religion, some idea may be gained of the effect the first view of him occasions in the mind of a European. On the afternoon of a very sultry day in June, I had got a table out in the veranda of my bungalow, and was amusing myself with a galvanic apparatus, giving such of my servants as had the courage, a taste of what they called _Wulatee boiujee_ (English lightning), when a long gaunt figure, with his hair hanging in disordered masses over his face, was observed to cross the lawn. On arriving within a few paces of where I stood, he drew himself up in an imposing attitude--one of his arms akimbo, while the other held out toward me what appeared to be a pair of tongs, with a brass dish at the extremity of it. "Who are you?" I called out. "Faquir," was the guttural response. "What do you want?" "Bheek" (alms). "Bheek!" I exclaimed, "surely you are joking--a great stout fellow like you can't be wanting bheek?" The faquir paid not the slightest attention, but continued holding out his tongs with the dish at the end of it. "You had better be off," I said; "I never give bheek to people who are able to work." "We do Khooda's work," replied the faquir, with a swagger.