southern India. He deplored the low estate and want of education among women; praised the new era and the blessings of British rule, the good roads, schools, hospitals, and things not dreamed of before, that had come with the Western education, which had only begun to reach the mass of the people. His Western education had not, however, steeled him to shaking hands with a casteless unbeliever, and he kept tables and chairs between us as he rose to go.
"I must go and hurry up the priests," said the suave judicial. "Since they know you cannot leave until midnight, they will not try to be ready before late afternoon. At one o'clock I will send my bandy and peon for you. You will find my bullocks faster than those you would get from the bazaar." And with more beautiful speeches about the honor of our visit to Chidambram and our appreciation of Dravidian art, he backed and bowed himself away to his bandy, with furtive glances lest we yet lay defiling hand on him, and send him through all the details of his morning toilet again, as the least of ills.
It was past one o'clock when the stately bullocks again tinkled down the road to the bangla; a peon with a broad sash and metal plate on his breast forming an escort of honor. There was no telling how much our occupancy defiled the magistrate's bandy while we progressed magnificently along a shaded road, between garnered fields and the lines of mud houses constituting villages—mud houses with mud floors, and mud porticos or shelves where the occupants loll by day and sleep at night. Men and
