When the Viceroy and his suite descend to Calcutta in November, the usual notices are issued for a levee and a drawing-room. On several occasions in recent years an attempt has been made to induce all the ladies of Calcutta to appear at the drawing-room with trains and feathers, but it has usually been left optional to them, the result being that the trains and feathers which do appear sometimes afford a sort of clue to the character and social position of the lady who wears them. The ladies who have the private _entrée_ at Government House make their bow first before the Viceroy’s wife, and then, with the gentlemen of their families, stand on either side of the Viceroy’s throne, in a sort of sacred semi-circle, in support of the Queen’s representative. The ladies who have not the private _entrée_ are then admitted, and presented in the order of their arrival. There are always a few beautiful and graceful English women in Calcutta, who would be an ornament to any European Court. Very few native ladies appear at the drawing-room, but a stout and stately olive-complexioned East Indian (half-caste) lady sometimes sweeps by, waving her ostrich plumes and with a train of golden tissue twenty-four feet long; and she is, perhaps, succeeded by a lady from Burmah, where the lower part of the female costume scarcely amounts to a single petticoat. When the drawing-room is over, the ladies who have been presented are ushered into the upper drawing-room or ball-room of Government House, where they can rejoin the gentlemen under whose escort they came in their carriages to Government House. Long buffets are laid out with everything that is needed to refresh them after their exertions, and the band plays for about an hour, until they quietly disperse to their homes. This is an excellent arrangement, as it affords the ladies a suitable opportunity of displaying their dresses, and seeing their friends’ dresses, and receiving the admiration to which they are entitled. About four hundred ladies usually appear at the drawing-rooms in Calcutta.