In my first week in Bombay I received an invitation to a grand dinner-party to be given at the house of a rich East Indian lady, a Mrs. C----, the widow of what is called in British India an uncovenanted officer. So great is the prestige attached to the word "officer" in the East that every man is an officer of some sort or other, from the brigadier to the private soldier. A civilian, consequently, is an uncovenanted officer, and as for the merchants, they are Mohguls, nabobs, Badishas, or Kudawunds. Mrs. C----'s house was situated near Parel, formerly "Nonpareil," a most lovely part of the island. Our carriage drove through a long wide avenue of fine trees, and brought us before a large one-storied stone building, pillared and with a spacious flight of stone steps leading to it. On the steps were half a dozen handsomely-dressed servants in long flowing white robes called "angrakas," crimson-and-gold striped turbans, and bright blue-and-gold cumberbunds, or scarfs, folded round their waists; the effect was certainly striking. These salââmed to us, and with stately dignity advanced and helped us to alight. We were then shown by another band of ushers, magnificently dressed, into a sumptuously furnished apartment, where we laid aside our light wrappings. A fresh troop of dusky-hued, richly-draped, and turbaned individuals marshalled us into the grand drawing-room, where we found the rich widow seated on a yellow satin ottoman surrounded by a bevy of ladies and gentlemen. The ladies all wore low-necked dresses of the most exquisitely delicate Indian fabrics, Chinese crapes, gauzes, mulmuls, and silks; and some of them were young and beautiful. At dinner numbers of dusky-hued attendants moved about us so softly that they did not seem to touch the floor with their feet; gliding noiselessly in and out, offering us costly viands and sparkling wines, laying down plates and removing them so dexterously as not to make the faintest sound, they seemed even to repress their breathing. Everything was done with magical effect. The punkahs overhead moved softly to and fro; the light fell from cocoanut-oil chandeliers in peculiarly softened splendor on the rare flowers, the glass, and the silver below. Everything went on with the ease and precision of clockwork, without the faintest echo of a click or sound. Even those domestics who did not wait at dinner-table stood with arms folded across their breasts under the shadows of doors or pillars, waiting their turn to serve, and so still and motionless were they that they might almost, save for the glitter in their eyes, have passed for bronze statues.