VISITS OF CEREMONY. 
23 
know if your friends will be at home, A carriage 
costs the same for four hours as for one, and 
when 3 r ou are going to call or to dine, it is 
ordered as soon as the declining sun makes it 
cool enough, and the fleet little steeds have taken 
you away out into the country before the short 
twilight ends. When your visit is over, they 
come back, flashing past the native houses, where 
fires for the evening meal bum red, and into the 
European neighbourhood, where guests are being 
received in brilliantly lighted verandahs. 
When one does not wish to receive, the fore 
verandah is not so lighted. If at home, the 
family keep in the inner hall, or sit at one end 
of the verandah reading by a single lamp, or 
sway to and fro fanning themselves in the rock- 
ing-chairs, which are the chief furniture of all 
verandahs. 
At the approach of dusk the ear is surprised 
by such a strange tumult that one eagerly 
asks, “ What is it ? ” Is it the rush of distant 
water? Is it the noise from a thousand over- 
charged gas-burners? Is it the creaking of an 
overstrained mill, — that stridulous, rushing, 
whirring, buzzing sound, which rises and falls, 
and dies and swells again ? It is only the song 
of the cicads, the bark of the frogs, the chirp of 
