140 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
the relationship subsisting between them. As the 
boy bore the complexion of his native clime,, and the 
features of the race from which he sprang on the 
maternal side,, he was looked upon as a half-caste 
by the relatives of the deceased, who had never been 
informed of the father’s marriage ; they, therefore, 
considered that they made a suitable provision for 
him by binding him an apprentice to a grocer, with 
whom he served his time and proved a faithful and 
assiduous servant. When the period of his appren- 
ticeship was completed, the relations of his late father 
gave him a hundred pounds and cast him upon the 
wide world to seek his fortune, at the same time dis- 
couraging any expectation of future assistance ,* glad 
to be thus easily freed from the claims of one whom 
they deemed an incumbrance. 
Without patron or friend, the deserted youth had 
little chance of establishing himself in his business by 
securing a respectable connexion — a half-caste being 
looked upon with a kind of conventional prejudice, 
which it is to be hoped the late act of Parliament in 
favour of this slighted race will tend speedily to sub- 
due. Thus circumstanced, he was at length reduced 
to such a state of destitution that, in order to prevent 
the accession of irremediable poverty, he became an 
itinerant dealer in tea, and in this humble capacity 
contrived to realize an uncertain subsistence, which 
he rendered still more precarious by adding to his 
domestic responsibilities that expensive blessing — a 
wife. He married the daughter of a labouring car- 
penter, with whom he casually became acquainted, 
without any portion but her beauty and household 
