[79] The writer in his younger days remembers to have been once taken up on a Kali Poojah night by a gang of infamous drunkards in the very heart of Calcutta. When he was returning home about midnight in company with some of his friends after seeing the _tamasha_, he being the youngest of the lot had necessarily lagged behind, when to his utter dismay he was suddenly laid hold of by a man who smelt strongly of liquor and carried him hurriedly into an empty house on the roadside. The first shout at the very threshold was,--"here we have got a _moori_", _i. e._ a victim; the ruffians, who had their faces covered with clothes, jumped up at the announcement, and one of them accosted him in the following manner--"what money and pice have you got?" The writer replied a few an his pice only. No Rupees? asked another; whereupon they all fell to searching his person and stripped him of all his clothes, which consisted of a _dhooty_, a _chadur_ and a _jama_, and finally bade him go. As a matter of course he was obliged to return home almost in a state of nudity, one of his friends lending him a _chadur_ on the occasion. In these days the introduction of gas light and the posting of constables on the highway have greatly checked such ruffianism. [80] This idea is strengthened by the opinion of Native medical students, many of whom, it is a matter of regret, are not great advocates of temperance. Natives use liquor not for health but solely for intoxicating purposes. A very successful Native Practitioner to whom not only the writer but many of his respectable friends are under great obligation, not long ago fell a victim to the besetting vice of intemperance, and confessed his guilt like a penitent sinner in his dying moments. His reputation was so great at one time that it was said "patients felt half cured when he entered the room." In the beginning of his brilliant career, he was one of the most staunch advocates of temperance. How frail is human nature! [81] For an account of the _Bamacharee_ Sect, see note D. X. THE SARASWATI POOJAH. Saraswati is the Hindoo goddess of learning. She is represented as seated in a water lily and playing on a lute. Throughout Bengal her worship is celebrated with more or less pomp on the fifth day of the increase of the moon, in the Bengali month of Magha or Falgoon (February). As the popular Shastras reckon the commencement of spring from this date, the people, especially the young and gay of both sexes, put on _basantee_ or yellow garments, and indulge in all sorts of low merriment, manifesting a depraved and vitiated taste.