skins contrasting well with the duskier hue of the lower classes. There
are several groups. With damp drapery clinging to their glistening
skins, they pour brass pots of cold water over their dripping bodies;
they rub themselves briskly, and gasp again as the cool element pours
over head and shoulders. They sit down while some young attendant or
relation vigorously rubs them down the back; while sitting they clean
their feet. Thus, amid much laughing and talking, and quaint gestures,
and not a little expectoration, they perform their ablutions. Not
unfrequently the more wealthy anoint their bodies with mustard oil,
which at all events keeps out cold and chill, as they claim that it
does, though it is not fragrant. Round the well you get all the village
news and scandal. It is always thronged in the mornings and evenings,
and only deserted when the fierce heat of midday plunges the village
into a lethargic silence; unbroken save where the hum of the hand-mill,
or the thump of the husking-post, tells where some busy damsel or
matron is grinding flour, or husking rice, in the cool shadow of her
hut, for the wants of her lord and master.

Education is now making rapid strides; it is fostered by government,
and many of the wealthier landowners or Zemindars subscribe liberally
for a schoolmaster in their villages. Near the principal street then,
in a sort of lane, shadowed by an old mango-tree, we come on the
village school. The little fellows have all discarded their upper
clothes on account of the heat, and with much noise, swaying the body
backwards and forwards, and monotonously intoning, they grind away at
the mill of learning, and try to get a knowledge of books. Other dusky
urchins figure away with lumps of chalk on the floor, or on flat pieces
of wood to serve as copy-books. The din increases as the stranger
passes: going into an English school, the stranger would probably cause
a momentary pause in the hum that is always heard in school. The little