their going into the Bazar early and accounts for their extra expenditure on the score of luxuries and superfluities of life, but the reader should bear in mind that such extravagance is indulged in only once a year. Generally esteemed as these people are for their saving qualities, frugal, simple and abstemious habits, an annual departure from the established rule is not unjustifiable. The rich classes, as will be evident from what has been said, spend enormous sums in making their fashionable purchases on this occasion. From the foregoing details it is easy to infer that the Doorga Poojah anniversary presses heavily on the limited resources of a Hindoo family. A rich man experiences little difficulty in meeting his expenses, but the middling and the humbler classes, who comprise nine-tenths of the population, are put to their wits' end to make both ends meet. They are sometimes obliged to solicit the pecuniary aid of their rich friends to enable them to get over the _Doorga_ difficulty. It is, perhaps, not generally known that during this popular festival, or rather before it, when all Bengal is in a state of social and religious ferment, when money must be had by fair means or foul, not a few unfortunate men, chiefly libertines and rakes, deliberately commit frauds by forging cheques, drafts, and notes, which eventually lead them into the greatest distress and disgrace. Besides the high price of clothes and of all descriptions of eatables, every family must have a month's provision to carry them through the period during which no money is forthcoming. I had almost forgotten to say anything about the annual gratuity which the Brahmins of Bengal obtain on the occasion of this festival. From time immemorial, when orthodox Hindooism was in the ascendant, the Brahmins not only advanced their claims, as now, to all the offerings made to gods or goddesses, small or great, but established a rule that every Hindoo, whose circumstances would permit it, should give them individually, one, two, four, or five Rupees at the return of this festival. Every respectable Hindoo family, even now-a-days when heterodoxy is rampant in all the great centres of education, has to give ten, fifteen, twenty-five, or fifty Rupees to Brahmins. Rich families give much more. So very tenacious are the Brahmins of this privilege that even if they earn one hundred Rupees a month by employment they will not forego a single Rupee once a year on this occasion, seeing they claim it as a birthright. These men have studied human nature, but they have built their hopes of permanent gain on the baseless fabric of a hollow superstition, which is destined, through the progress of improvement, inevitably to fall into decay. It is too late to retrieve the huge blunder of laying a false foundation for their gains. FOOTNOTES: