to taste it. But I know that in every operation he is animated by an
exalted sense of blended duty and prerogative, and if I could really
open his mind to the thought that the least of his attentions was
dispensable, his whole nature would be demoralized at once; so I
endure and grow lean. Another thing which works towards the same
result is a practice that he has of studying my tastes, and when he
thinks he has detected a preference for a particular dish, plying me
with that until the very sight of it becomes nauseous. At one time
he fed me with "broon custard" pudding for about six months, until in
desperation I interdicted that preparation for evermore, and he fell
back upon "lemol custard." Thus my luxuries are cut off one after
another and there is little left that I can eat.

Our grandfathers used to have Parsee butlers in tall hats to wait
upon them, but that race is now extinct. The Butler on this side of
India is now a Goanese, or a Soortee, or, more rarely, a Mussulman.
Each of these has, doubtless, his own characteristics; but have you
ever stepped back a few paces and contemplated, not your own or
anyone else's individual servant, but the entire phenomenon of an
Indian Butler? Here is a man whose food by nature is curry and rice,
before a hillock of which he sits cross-legged, and putting his five
fingers into it, makes a large bolus, which he pushes into his mouth.
He repeats this till all is gone, and then he sleeps like a boa-
constrictor until he recovers his activity; or else he feeds on great
flat cakes of wheat flour, off which he rends jagged-pieces and
lubricates them with some spicy and unctuous gravy. All our ways of
life, our meats and drinks, and all our notions of propriety and
fitness in connection with the complicated business of appeasing our
hunger as becomes our station, all these are a foreign land to him:
yet he has made himself altogether at home in them. He has a sound