tion that it is Christmas Day. The khitmugar with the tea-tray echoes this news, and doubtless the bundle of clothes in the inner chamber informs her mistress of the fact and solicits some douceur in consideration of past services and promised services to come.

In an Anglo-Indian household buried far within the Mofusil the early morning meal is generally the feature of the day. If not too cold it will be taken on the verandah; and if, as it does on this occasion, the weather will allow it, Christmas morning furnishes a fascinating page of native life. Already before the sahib has appeared the whole strength of the senior servants in the factory has paraded to make their obeisance. Each has put on a clean turban and a brand-new suit of clothes, and as a special mark of respect those that are more warmly clad will have donned muslins above the thicker textures. The sahib steps out on to the verandah and, expert agriculturist as he is, throws his first glance to the sky above to ascertain the nature of the weather. In the meantime the white-robed servants bend double in correct salaam. Then led by the senior, a Rajput Jemedar, each in turn files up to the steps and presents a silver coin for the sahib's acceptance. custom is not to take the rupee. The sahib just puts forward his right hand and lightly touches the coin, and the homage is considered given and accepted.

The

the ordinary fisher-folk that rent the river rights, have brought the best catch from their evening's labors. An these gifts are laid out upon the verandah to please the housekeeping instinct of the mem-sahib when she shall arrive. Then suddenly the crowd is pushed aside, and a young native, exquisitely dressed after the manner appertaining to the youths who have studied in the Calcutta universities, presses forward with a heavy basket borne on the head of a coolie. He is the son of a man desirous of the sublease of a building contract, and he seizes the occasion as one likely to influence the owner of the contract. He has been farther afield than his more ignorant fellows; he has visited the dry-store at the nearest railway-station, and there has purchased a miscellane ous collection of the food-stuffs exported by the great canning industries of the world. Conscious of his efforts, he is careful as he makes the presentation to enumerate the prices of the various articles.

Then the lady of the house appears, and again the whole assembled throng almost sweeps the ground in the exuberance of its salutation. For the time being the court is at an end, and with a wave of his hand the sahib dismisses his dependants, and settles to his morning meal.

The sound of bare feet is heard pattering along the drive. Perspiring from every pore, a half-naked savage comes panting into the verandah. It is the dak-walla,' who, conscious that he brings the Christmas mail, has made half an hour on the limit allowed for his ten-mile run. The key is produced, and the leather satchel falls open to display that which is dearer to all exiles in India than anything else, the covers that bring messages from home. It is not for us here to enter into the details of their contents. It may be

Post-messenger.

messages from the aged parents in their home in Sussex; it may be a scrawling note from the child which has been separated from its mother these five long years; or it may, be from the old friend who once was an everyday companion, and who, though separated by the chance of life, never forgets the past.

There is to be a Christmas gathering, and it is not long before the guests arrive. The first is the cheery parson. He has driven his old mare twenty miles, but that is nothing. Did he not drive her forty when Angus Smith lay dying a year ago? she can surely then cover twenty miles to hold a Christian service among a little colony of exiles. He is received by host and hostess with that bonhomie and delightful welcome which is only to be found amongst exiles in a foreign land. The next guest is a youth. He has come fifteen miles at a hand-canter rather than spend his Christmas Day alone. It is almost worth a journey to India to see the manner in which he sits his horse, for this kind are the men who from their youth up have earned their living in the saddle. And all through an hour bidden and unbidden guests continue to drop in, until at least a gathering of twenty is made.

A short service is held in the drawing-room, and then the whole party prepares to spend the morning in a pastime which appeals to most Englishmen, whether at home or abroad. The young man whose horsemanship we have already noticed disappears to the stables and shortly returns, surrounded by the most heterogeneous pack of hounds that ever caused a sportsman's pulse to quicken in its beat. In leash are two couple of foxhounds. These had been imported the previous year from England. Hunted through the cold weather, they were bought up at the end of the season by the youthful planter to become the nucleus of

his "bobbery" pack. To support his foxhounds he depended upon two gaunt half-bred greyhounds, a civilized pariah, and a dozen maybe offshoots and complications of the fox-terrier breed. You in your pink coats and well-polished tops may possibly despise so quaint an assortment, but those who have hunted behind such a pack know the fun and pleasure to be attained, even though it is the humblest imitation of the real pastime.

While the nondescript terriers are disporting themselves in the sheer ecstasy of the knowledge that they are to be out that morning, a dozen syces have arrived with a dozen horses almost as heterogeneous as the pack itself. Horses of all shapes and sizes, from the aristocratic waler which cost two thousand rupees in Calcutta to the pigmy country-bred which wasn't considered a bargain at seventy-five rupees in the neighboring bazaar. As soon as all are mounted, the owner of the pack, who fills the rôle of master, huntsman, and whip combined, leads his rabble out into the fields.

It is a beautiful cold-weather morning. Save for the fleecy haze which is inseparable from this season in Northern India, there is not a cloud in the sky. The whole arch of heaven is that beautiful deep blue for which those who have left the East may yearn but can never find elsewhere. The sun is not up high enough yet to destroy that bite in the air which is the feature of the Indian winter, and under which the white man is able to recuperate against the furnace of the summer. The hunt turns out into a great open plain of cultivated land,-land that is waiting for the early morning frosts to cease in order that it may receive the seed of the spring sowings. This plain is fringed with little mango-groves, and far on the left, where the smoke-bred mist hangs heaviest, nestles a tiny village, an occasional white-washed wall

and red-tiled roof showing where some wealthier peasant has made his home. But for this village and its attendant palm-trees and groups of broad plantains the scene is hardly Eastern. Presently the fallow-land is left behind and the hunt passes over crops of sweet-potatoes and winter wheat. Here and there it makes a detour to avoid a patch of maturing tobacco. The villagers are still at work in this plot, carefully scrutinizing each broad leaf, searching for the parasites which unremoved may reduce their profits by half their margin. They rise from their work and gravely salute the sahibs, inwardly marvelling what folly can possess sane men that they can find enjoyment in the society of twenty half-wild dogs. Then we are into the village itself, passing between squalid huts with ill-thatched roofs. The women at the wells hastily hide their faces and flee to some shelter from which they can view the passing cavalcade without laying themselves open to the accusation of indelicacy. The little brown children, whose naked figures seem impervious to cold, come trooping to the roadside, and in shrill childish voices try to emulate their elders in the courtesy of salutation.

Half a mile from the village we find the covert which it is hoped will hold the jackal. The foxhounds are loosed from their leashes, and, with an imitation of the professional formula, the master puts his hounds into covert. But long before he had given the appointed word the fox-terriers and nondescripts were streaming in a long white line towards the tangled grass patch. Almost before the serious elders of the pack could set about their business Master Rip or Mistress Jemima had found their heart's desire. A couple of yaps, and then the "music" is taken up in a dozen different keys. But one of the dog-keepers has viewed the old grey jackal stealing away to

wards the river-bank. One view-halloo is enough, and then all semblance of the English sport is formally abandoned. It is a case of field, jackal, and pack each for itself and Providence for us all. The great long-striding greyhounds easily take the van, then come the better mounted of the field, followed at intervals by toiling, breathless terriers and deep-throated, mystified foxhounds. But the jackal has heard of greyhounds before. With a twist and a turn just under the bank of the river he sends them off at a tangent, while taking advantage of the tamarisk fringe he follows a line at right angles. In a country where hounds can barely work by scent, it is essential that man should use his head. The huntsman had put jackals out of that very grass before, and experience had taught him the usual manoeuvre they made when they reached the river-bed. He was prepared for it, and manfully sounding his horn, he conveyed part of his pack by a short cut: he hit off the line truly, and gave his greyhounds another view. The jackal had three hundred yards' advantage, but the greyhounds had seen him, and they bent to the work of catching him. It was then coursing of the best, and though a covert with an earth in it was almost within reach, the leading greyhound rolled him over. He was up again and away. Over he rolled again, and then had another chance. But he turned full into the face of the fleetest of the nondescripts, and was pinned down for ever, to be worried into his next life by a multitude of terriers, who on these occasions prove the busiest sportsmen that ever ran a jackal on sight.

You who are not satisfied unless you have forty minutes of the best in a grass country will be inclined to scoff at our poor attempts at hunting. But then we can have a dozen of these brief moments in a morning, and we are satisfied with the small mead

which the country and circumstances will allow us! While the terriers are worrying the carcass, and the foxhounds piteously looking for water, and the man on the seventy-five-rupee pony, who was unfortunate enough to ride into a silver-fox earth, is brushing the soft mud from his coat, an excited villager arrives with the startling intelligence that he has discovered a tiger in a neighboring patch of tamarisk. We know well enough that in this highly cultivated country there is the smallest possible chance of a tiger being so far away from the jungles. But as the

man is most eloquent in his description and marvellous in the details of the beast, we feel sure that he has seen something. The covert is conveniently close and is consequently drawn. As a sign of his confidence in his own story the villager for the purpose of safety climbs into a babul-tree, and from this point of vantage directs the operations. His directions are not needed long, for out of the thickest portion of the tamarisk bounds a beautiful neilghi. Now here is a run to tax the efforts of the best of sportsmen. For a man who will ride down a neilghi must ride as cunning and as hard as any fellow-sportsman in the Shires!

The

It was some hours before the whole of the field with the residue of the pack returned to the rendezvous. majority of the hounds, however, from want of wind and want of length of limb, had long given up the hunt, and found their way back to their temporary kennel. This is a common failing in over-enthusiastic sporting dogs. The want of discipline in a "bobbery" pack is very similar to the lack of the same quality in irregular troops in a longprotracted war; in fact, without being unduly discourteous, we have had

4 Blue bull. 5 Lunch. Marriage-settlement money paid by the

many incidents recently forced upon us which find a parallel in the inconsequent behavior of an Indian scratch hunt.

But even after a wash and brush-up and a big midday tiffin,' the festivities of the Indian Christmas had not been all exhausted. In the afternoon the sahib was prepared to receive the more distinguished of his native visitors, and about half-past four the first of these arrived. He was a very large landowner, and consequently very heavily in debt. The burden of this debt had been recently increased by the preliminary nuptials of a five-year-old daughter, who had been ill-advised and hardy enough not to succumb to the usual measure of infanticide adopted in the case of a superfluity of daughters. So grave had been the expenses incurred in the settling of the tilak," and so hard were the requests of the various moneylenders consulted, that the poor unfortunate father would fain sell a portion of his property to the sahib. The sahib, after the manner of his kind, and with a cunning bred of a long residence in the East, showed but little inclination to clinch a bargain which had been his prime desire for many years. Consequently there was nothing that the landowner could do that he would consider a trouble, provided that it placed him in a better footing with the white taskmaster. This day being Christmas, he selected it as opportune to show the greatest deference. Therefore he had his elephant caparisoned in its very best trapping, and, attended by his mace-bearer and his more influential retainers, he came to visit the sahib armed with a present of gold mohurs.

In consideration of the occasion the stout landowner was ushered in amongst the circle of Christmas visitors, and as a special mark of distinc

father of the bride to the father of the bridegroom.

The

tion was offered a chair. In trepidation he sat dubiously on the edge, and talked vaguely about the visit of the lieutenant-governor to the district, a visit which had taken place at least five years previously. Having exhausted this topic of conversation, he was as a special favor allowed to visit certain rooms within the bungalow. silver plate in the dining-room somewhat interested him; also the table, upon which the skeleton of the Christmas dinner to be was already spread, attracted his attention. But, orientallike, his remarks of approbation or the reverse were few until he saw the billiard-table. Then even oriental gentility could not restrain his admiration. He offered to buy it on the spot, remarking that it was the kind of bed that he had been wanting for years. A printed price-list of billiard-tables was found in some obscure corner and presented to him. Armed with this he took his leave with all that courtesy for which the high-caste Oriental is famed, and returned to his elephant, Blackwood's Magazine.

The scope of this paper will only allow of reference to one more incident illustrative of the feelings which at this season move the Englishman in exile. The dinner has been served. The dignified sirdar has placed the port and sherry in front of the sahib, and has marshalled the rest of the servants out of the room. In general appearance it is much the same as any other English dinner-table. Men and women are dressed as we see them in the West; the closed doors and the pall of night have hidden away the Indian scenery; and now that the native servants have withdrawn, the moment has arrived for the drinking of a toast which to the exile is the most moving, the most solemn toast of all. The decanters pass, and then the host, calling upon his guests to take wine with him, proposes the "old folks at home." Only those who have been in exile can appreciate the spirit of this toast.

Man, though nominally a rational being, is not given to overmuch thinking, and, like Peter of old, is prone to call common-even when not regarding as unclean-much that is manifestly let down from Heaven. So it comes about that whatever is familiar ceases to excite question, thought, or even notice.

This is true not only of the works of Nature per se, but even of such of them as are modified by man himself. To take one instance, literally obvious to every wayfarer by road or traveller by rail-namely, the hedges, which in miles upon miles map the fair face of

our fertile land. Like the lines of the human face, they betoken much, and if read aright are seen to have no slight connection with the history of the country. Yet few of us, it is to be feared, have ever bestowed a thought upon their origin, their varieties, and their meaning; or, if at all, only, perchance, when we have stood upon some hill heaved high above the land, betwen the flat blue plain of the sea on one hand and the undulating earth on the other, the crests of whose solid billows are crowned by copses and woods rising among a network of thin green lines of hedgerows.