The _Cranny_, or clerk, may be either a native Armenian, a native Portugueze, or a Bengallee: the former are not very common; the second are more numerous; but the third are every where to be seen. It really is wonderful how well many of the latter can write, without understanding a word of what is written. They have a steady hand, a keen eye, and an admirable readiness in casting up accounts. Those who are habituated to our mode of book keeping, profess to consider it greatly superior to their own, but it is not a very easy matter to get them into it. That multiplicity of fractions which prevails, in consequence of the perpetual fluctuation in their currency, causes them to be very well versed in that branch of arithmetic, and to produce the most correct calculations. The rates of wages are different according to the abilities of individuals; thus, a clever _cranny_ in a public office, such as the auditor general’s, or the pay-master general’s, or the assay and mint, may receive from forty to a hundred rupees monthly, while, in mercantile houses, they rarely receive more than thirty, generally, indeed, from ten to twenty; while many are glad to serve gratis, merely for the purpose of an introduction to that line of employment; as well as to perfect themselves in book keeping, and in a proper style of correspondence. The use these gentry make of English words, is often highly diverting: they study synonymes very industriously; poring over Johnson’s dictionary, and carefully selecting such terms, as appear to them least in use; thinking that such must, of course, make finer language. The following may serve as a specimen: it was written by a _cranny_ to his master, in consequence of an exterior window shutter having been blown down by a severe north-wester. ‘Honorable Sir, ‘Yesterday vesper arrive great hurricane; valve of little aperture not fasten; first make great trepidation and palpitation, then precipitate into precinct. God grant master more long life, and more great post. I remain, Honorable Sir, in all token of respect, Master’s writer, BISSONAUT METRE.’ ‘P.S. No tranquillity in house since valve adjourn.—I send for carpenter to make re-unite.’ Those unacquainted with the pedantry of Bengallee writers, may suspect me of coining for the occasion; placing the above on a footing with Smollet’s ‘Horse-spittle of anvil-heads,’ &c.; but I assure my readers, that it is a literal transcript from a note of which the original was in my father’s possession for many years; it is by no means so preposterous as many that have, on account of their ridiculous diction, been published in the Calcutta papers.