To cut the matter short, however, I hired Rumjohnny on the strength of his testimonials; and having now got my baggage all up, moved off with him and Chattermohun Ghose to the Custom-house. Having arranged matters there, I proceeded through the thronged streets of Calcutta to a tavern or punch-house, somewhere in the aristocratic region of Ranamoody Gully; a sort of place of entertainment which, in those days (though, from their improved character the case is now, I understand, different), it was considered quite _infra dig._ in a gentleman to visit. However, being a griff, I knew nothing of this, and if the case had been otherwise, I should have been without an alternative. Dirty tablecloths, well spotted with kail and mustard; prawn curries, capital beef-steaks, domestics of the cut of Rumjohnny, a rickety, rusty, torn billiard-table, on which, day and night, the balls were going, lots of _shippies_, and a dingy bed, were the leading features of this establishment, not forgetting clouds of voracious and well-fleshed musquitoes, to which those of Madras were a mere joke. I shall not inflict on the reader a dry detail of the occurrences of the next three days; let it suffice to state, that at the end of that period, having duly reported my arrival, &c., I found myself in possession of an advance of 150 sicca rupees, sterling money of Bengal, four bare walls and a puckah floor in the south barracks of Fort William, and about to fit up the same in the first style of griffinish fashion, under the able direction of Chattermohun Ghose. The south barracks is one of several ranges within the Fort, and allotted principally to the accommodation of unmarried subs. Like the Burlington Arcade, it has a long passage down the centre, into which the doors of the several quarters open; but here the resemblance ceases. Here I had a practical illustration of the ill-working of the social system, the living in a species of community under the present discordant and defective state of our feelings and habits. The passage was sounding and reverberating, and each occupant of a quarter had much of the benefit of his neighbour’s flute, fiddle, or French horn, whether “i’ the vein” for harmony or not; shoe brushings, occasional yells of servants undergoing the discipline of fist or cane, jolly ensigns and cadets clattering up and down, cracking horsewhips, whistling the “_Flaxen-headed Cow-boy_” or “_Begone Dull Care_,” the arrival of files of coolies laden with purchases from the China Bazaar or Tulloch’s Auction Room, pleasantly varied by interminable wranglings on the part of master’s sirdar or bursar, touching payments and _dustoorie_, or custom; payees urging pleas in deprecation of abatement, sirdar overruling the same—constituted a few of the _désagrémens_ of a south-barrack life. The optical department was not less varied and novel; but it could be shut out at pleasure, an advantage not predicable of the former.