When, in Calcutta, you have smitten the dry rock of your lonely life with the magic rod of connubial love, and that well-spring of pleasure, a new baby, has leaped up in the midst of your wilderness of exile, the demonstration, if any, with which your servants will receive the glad tidings, will depend wholly on the "denomination of the imbecile offspring," as our eleëmosynary widow, Mrs. Diana Theodosia Comfort Green, would call it. If it happen to be only a girl, there will be a trace of pity in the silent salaam with which the grim _durwan_ salutes you as you roll into your _palkee_ at the gate to proceed to the _godowns_ where they are weighing the saltpetre and the gunny bags. As he touches his forehead with his joined palms, he thinks of the difference that color makes to the babivorous crocodiles of Ganges. Perhaps your gray-beard circar, privileged by virtue of high caste and faithful service, will take upon himself to condole with you: "_Khodabund_" he will say, "better luck next time; Heaven is not always with one's paternal hopes; let us trust that my lord may live to say it might have been worse; let us pray that the _baba's_ bridal necklace may be as gay as rubies and as light as lilies, and that she may die before her husband." But if to the existing number of your _suntoshums_--the jewels that hang on the Mem Sahib's bosom--a man-child is added, ah, then there is merry-making in the verandas, and happy salaaming on the stairs; and in the fulness of his Hindoo Sary-Gampness, which counts the Sahib blessed that hath "his quiver full of sich," he says, _Ap-ki kullejee kaisa burri ho-jaga! Khodá rukho ki beebi-ka kullejee bhee itni burri hoga,--Gurreeb-purwan!_ "How large my lord's liver is about to grow! God grant to the Mem Sahib, my exalted lady, a liver likewise large,--O favored protector of the poor!" The happiness and honors which should follow upon the birth of a male child being figuratively comprehended in that enlargement of the liver whence comes the good digestion for which alone life is worth the living. Many and grievous perils do environ baby-life by the Ganges,--perils of _dry_ nurses, perils by wolves, perils by crocodiles, perils by the Evil Eye, perils by kidnappers, perils by cobras, perils by devils.