second and a more ceremonious repast enabled them once more to perch upon their heels. It was hard eating this time; the shorwa, or mutton broth, thickened with melted butter, attracted admiration; the guests, however, could only hint at its excellences, because in the East if you praise a man’s meat you intend to slight his society. The _plat de résistance_ was, as usual, the pillaw, or, as it is here called, pulao,--not the conventional mess of rice and fowl, almonds and raisins, onion-shreds, cardomoms, and other abominations, which goes by that name amongst Anglo-Indians, but a solid heap of rice, boiled after being greased with a handful of ghee-- (I must here indulge in a little digression. For the past century, which concluded with reducing India to the rank of a British province, the proud invader has eaten her rice after a fashion which has secured for him the contempt of the East. He deliberately boils it, and after drawing off the nutritious starch or gluten called “conjee,” which forms the perquisite of his Portuguese or his Pariah cook, he is fain to fill himself with that which has become little more nutritious than the prodigal’s husks. Great, indeed, is the invader’s ignorance upon that point. Peace be to the manes of Lord Macaulay, but listen to and wonder at his eloquent words!--“The Sepoys came to Clive, not to complain of their scanty fare, but to propose that all the grain should be given to the Europeans, who required more nourishment than the natives of Asia. The thin gruel, they said, which was strained away from the rice would suffice for themselves. History contains no more touching instance of military fidelity, or of the influence of a commanding mind.” Indians never fail to drink the “conjee.” The Arab, on the other hand, mingles with his rice a sufficiency of ghee to prevent the extraction of the “thin gruel,” and thus makes the grain as palatable and as nutritious as Nature intended it to be.)