A first introduction to the Calcutta _durwan_ is not nice. If he is chewing _pan_, he does not take the trouble to get rid of his quid. If he is sitting on his _charpoy_ chewing sugarcane, he does not think it worth his while to rise. He has to be taught those things, and he cannot understand why he should be reproved. Clearly he is a survival of a played-out system. Providence never intended that any native should be made a _concierge_ more insolent than any of the French variety. The people of Calcutta put an Uria in a little lodge close to the gate of their house, in order that loafers may be turned away, and the houses protected from theft. The natural result is that the _durwan_ treats everybody whom he does not know as a loafer, has an intimate and vendible knowledge of all the outgoings and incomings in that house, and controls, to a large extent, the nomination of the _naukar-log_. They say that one of the estimable class is now suing a bank for about three lakhs of rupees. Up-country, a Lieutenant-Governor’s _charprassi_ has to work for thirty years before he can retire on seventy thousand rupees of savings. The Calcutta _durwan_ is a great institution. The head and front of his offence is that he will insist upon trying to talk English. How he protects the houses Calcutta only knows. He can be frightened out of his wits by severe speech, and is generally asleep in calling hours. If a rough round of visits be any guide, three times out of seven he is fragrant of drink. So much for the durwan. Now for the houses he guards. Very pleasant is the sensation of being ushered into a pestiferously stablesome drawing-room. “Does this always happen?” No, “not unless you shut up the room for some time; but if you open the _jhilmills_ there are other smells. You see the stables and the servants’ quarters are close too.” People pay five hundred a month for half-a-dozen rooms filled with _attr_ of this kind. They make no complaint. When they think the honor of the city is at stake they say defiantly: “Yes, but you must remember we’re a metropolis. We are crowded here. We have no room. We aren’t like your little stations.” Chouringhi is a stately place full of sumptuous houses, but it is best to look at it hastily. Stop to consider for a moment what the cramped compounds, the black soaked soil, the netted intricacies of the service-staircases, the packed stables, the seethment of human life round the _durwans_’ lodges, and the curious arrangement of little open drains means, and you will call it a whited sepulchre.