2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



social privileges rest very much upon this opinion. She and her 

 family live in a small, flat-roofed, " cutcha "-built habitation, much 

 stained and faded, standing flush with one of the many narrow 

 streets that creep and wind among all Calcutta's tall houses, even 

 to the skirts of the stately residence of the " Burra lord sahib " 

 himself. It is very hot, stifling, in those crooked little streets; 

 the pleasant south wind does not always blow through to sweeten 

 them, and they bear much need of sweetening. They cause Cal- 

 cutta's Municipal Council more anxious hours than is the province 

 of thoroughfares, on account of the prosperity of bacilli in their 

 midst ; and though the Municipal Council conspired all day, and 

 sat up all night, taking measures of reprisal, the bacilli would 

 still be glad and the inhabitants would still decrease. Not appre- 

 ciably, however ; there are far too many of them. Such numbers 

 of little open shops, uninviting little shops, where rice and dall 

 and sticky brown sweetmeats are piled up in earthen bowls to 

 catch all the uncleanness of the roads ! Such numbers of proprie- 

 tors to each little shop, who sit on their dusty thresholds, as often 

 as not with their glistening bare backs turned to custom, gossip- 

 ing about the monsoon, taking turns at the gurgling cocoanut of 

 the hubble-bubble ! And then the comers and the goers, turbaned 

 and bareheaded, dressed in the flowing robes of the Prophet or the 

 simple dhoty of the coolie-lok, all upon the various interminable 

 little businesses by which they gain leave to live — to say nothing 

 of Mrs. De Souza's own family, which is large, or of her social con- 

 nection, which stretches, interspersed by the little shops, all the 

 way down the street. But I must deny myself the pleasure of 

 referring to Mrs. De Souza further in this personal strain. It is, 

 after all, contrary to the ethics of good neighborhood that I 

 should take any great advantage of an upper window, in spite of 

 the generous publicity of my neighbor's domestic arrangements, 

 which seem to invite both inspection and report. I must hurry 

 unflinchingly on to say that Mrs. De Souza inhabits another world 

 than the little Anglo-Indian one, a world with mysterious affinities 

 and attractions, however, both for ours and for the great dusky 

 tropical swinging sphere of the pure " native." Nobody knows it 

 very well that I have heard of ; indeed, it would require some 

 courage to profess familiar acquaintance there ; but it is quite with- 

 in reach of astronomical observation, which is not compromising. 

 Eurasia has no boundaries. It lies, a varying social fact, all 

 over India, thick in the great cities, thickest in Calcutta, where 

 the conditions of climate and bread-winning are most suitable ; 

 where, moreover, Eurasian charities are most numerous. Wher- 

 ever Europeans have come and gone, these people have sprung 

 up in weedy testimony of them — these people who do not go, 

 who have received somewhat in the feeble inheritance of their 



