When the several female members of a household meet together, enlivened by the company of their neighbours and friends (such visits being few and far between), these first object of inquiry is generally the amount of ornaments possessed, their workmanship, their value. Few things please them better than a conversation on this subject, which from the absence of mental culture, almost wholly monopolizes their mind, despite the natural tendency of human intellect to a progressive development. If not thus absorbed, the time is usually frittered away by sundry petty frivolous inquiries of a purely domestic character. On matters of the most vital importance their notions are as crude and irrational as they are absurd and childish.[3] Except in isolated instances, their bearing towards each other is generally marked by suavity, and kindliness of manners which has a tendency to draw closer the bond of union between them all. It is on such occasions that the amiable loveliness of human nature, is displayed,--brightening, for a time, at least the otherwise dark region of a Hindoo zenana and cheering the hearts of its inmates. In a thickly populated city like Calcutta, with its broad roads and dense crowds at all hours of the day, without a closed conveyance, either a palkee or a carriage, no married female is permitted to leave the house even for a single moment, for that of her sister, perhaps some three doors from her own. So great is the privacy, and punctiliousness with which female honor is guarded in the East. The sanction of the male or female head must, as a standing rule of female etiquette, be obtained before any one is at liberty to go out even to return a friendly or ceremonious visit. The reader may form an idea as to the tenacity with which the close zenana system in a respectable family is enforced, from the circumstance of a young _Bahou_ or daughter-in-law (the rules being not so strict in the case of a daughter) being set down as immodest and unmannerly, if she were accidently seen to tread the outer or male compartment of the house. If she but chance to articulate a word or a phrase so as to reach the ear of a male outside, she is severely censured, and steps are instantly taken, to teach her better manners for the future. Even the _Ghinni_, or female Head, does not escape censure for a like offence. With such scrupulous pertinacity is the privacy of the _inner_ life of the Hindoo society observed. A social line of demarcation is drawn around the zenana which a genteel Hindoo female is told and taught never to overstep, either in her conversation or bearing. Woe be to the day when she is incautiously led to move beyond her sphere, which, for all the practical purposes of life, is closely hemmed in by a ring of miserable seclusion, illustrating the scornful lines of the poet: "Let Eastern tyrants from the light of heaven Seclude their bosom slaves."