not one among them would have dared to trust himself in for either
love or money. Considering that our entertainer was a Hindoo, and
that his dinner-giving appliances were limited, each person having
to bring his own knife, fork, spoon, and chair, we fared very well,
and after having drunk his health, again assembled in the court,
where we found Rumbeer Singh still occupied with the wearisome nach,
and reattired in a gorgeous dress of green velvet and gold. After a
short stay he got up, and we all followed his example, glad enough
to bring the entertainment to an end, and betake ourselves to our
boats. At the stairs there was a desperate encounter with innumerable
boatmen, each boat having six, eight, or ten sailors, and all being
equally anxious to uphold the credit of their craft by being the
first to land their masters safe, at home. We were fortunate enough to
reach our own at once, and, with a shouting crew, away we dashed up
the river, leaving the others struggling, fighting, and flourishing
their paddles in the air, in a way which was more suggestive of an
insurrection scene in Masaniello than the departure of guests from
a peaceable gentleman's own hall door on the night of an evening party.

On the stairs there was an extraordinary assemblage of slippers, which
seemed to hold the same relative position that hats and cloaks do in
more enlightened communities -- that is, the good ones were taken by
the owners of the bad, and the proprietors of the bad ones were fain
to make the best of the exchange. Next morning our khidmutgar came up
with a most doleful countenance and presented to our notice a pair of
certainly most ill-favoured slippers, which a fellow true-believer had
INADVERTENTLY substituted for a pair of later date. The lost ones had,
in fact, only recently been received from the boot-maker; and the
blow was difficult to bear with resignation, even by the saintliest
follower of Islam -- a reputation which our retainer came short of