others, in appearance intermediate, who are the offspring of hamals
and mussals. These at a later stage become coolies, going to market
in the morning, fetching ice and soda-water, and so on, until they
mature into hamals and mussals themselves. Like all larvae, dog-boys
eat voraciously and grow rapidly. You engage a little fellow about a
cubit high, and for a time he does not seem to change at all; then
one morning you notice that his legs have come out half a yard or
more from his pantaloons, and soon your bright little page is a
gawky, long-limbed lout, who comes to ask for leave that he may go to
his country and get married. If you do not give it he will take it,
and no doubt you are well rid of him, for the intellect in these
people ripens about the age of fourteen or fifteen, and after that
the faculty of learning anything new stops, and general intelligence
declines. At any rate, when once your boy begins to grow long and
weedy, his days as a dog-boy are ended. He will pass through a
chrysalis stage in his country, or somewhere else, and after a time
emerge in his mature form, in which he will still remember you, and
salaam to you when he meets you on the road. If he left your service
in disgrace, he is so much the more punctilious in observing this
ceremony, which is not an expression of gratitude, but merely an
assertion of his right to public recognition at your hands, as one
who had the honour of eating your salt. I am certain an Oriental
salaam is essentially a claim rather than a tribute. For this reason
your peons, as they stand in line to receive you at your office door,
are very careful not to salaam all at once, lest you might think one
promiscuous recognition sufficient for all. The havildar, or naik,
as is his right, salutes first, and then the rest follow with
sufficient interval to allow you to recognise each one separately. I
have met some men with such lordly souls that they would not
condescend to acknowledge the salutations of menials; but you gain