In this place I began my first attempt at housekeeping in the East, and I can truly say, without the least exaggeration, that for months the house kept itself and my numerous servants kept me. To begin with, there were too many servants for so quiet and unpretending a household, but I soon found it would be still more difficult to do with fewer: "_dustoor_," custom, was flung into my face morning, noon, and night. I implored my husband to send half of them away, but if he sent one off, either the whole gang disappeared like a flash or else the work of the banished servant was scrupulously avoided by every one in the establishment. There was, in short, a servant for every distinct thing to be done in the house. There was a _khansamah_, or native butler, a high-caste Hindoo, who was supposed to keep all the servants in order, but who invariably incited a revolution in the camp if I wished anything to be done my way and not his. Then there was a cook, a _kling_ (a name for a certain race natives of Madras), who got drunk whenever we happened to have friends to dinner; there was a cook's mate, who was inclined to be musical just as we were going to sleep; there was a _buttee-wallah_, or lamplighter, a stripling, some near relation of the butler's, whose friends and relatives were always dying, and who asked permission three times in the course of a few months to be allowed to go and bury his mother. When I very gently, because of his flowing tears and doleful expression of face, reminded him that he had already buried or burned her twice, he burst into a passionate sob and said, "Oh! that one was my aunt's mother, and the last one my father's mother, but this is my own, own mother." Of course I had to let him go off for two or three days, and the butler too, who was also a mourner. Then there were besides these an _ayah_, or lady's-maid; a _dhoby_, or washerman, who came to the house once a week for the clothes, and stayed away sometimes for three weeks, owing to that chronic epidemic, death, in the family; a _bheestie_, who filled the tubs in the bathroom with water, and did nothing else; a _jarroo-wallah_, who only came each morning and swept the house and grounds, and then disappeared till the next time; a coachman, a groom, a _pundit_, or professor of Oriental languages; and lastly, a tailor, whose name was Tom. He, Tom, was a Portuguese Christian, and attended to the mending of the household linen and the making of our clothes. He was the least manageable of the whole lot. He would not answer to the name "boy," a generic name for servants in India and a corruption of the Hindostanee word _bhai_, brother, but insisted on being called "Tom." This put me very often into an awkward position, as this was the familiar name by which I had learned to call my husband, not knowing that there was another "Tom" attached to him from his bachelor establishment. Once or twice, forgetting this fact, I happened