gentlemen sat down to make their observations upon men and manners, but as they had first of all to make their observations upon a cold sirloin of beef, a dish of stewed duck, some grilled fowl, and sundry bottles of pale ale, it was some time before the men and manners came upon the tapis; however, we think it right to state, that they did come at last, and that Peregrine Pultuney observed, before he left the tiffin table, that whenever he called pinaka paunee (meaning the waiter), a servant brought him a tumbler of the pure element, saltpetred into tolerable coolness; that there were a great number of pinaka paunees in the room, one at least to every eater-that over the dinner-table there was a great long wood-and-canvass frame, utterly unlike any thing he had ever seen before, suspended by ropes from the ceiling, which a man outside the door kept pulling backwards and forwards, by means of a rope attached to the frame-that this strange machine was called a punkah, and was the most useful piece of furniture in the house-that the gentlemen at table were very vulgar gentlemen, for they took beer with one another as respectable people do wine-and finally that pinaka paunee meant drinking water, whilst qui hai was Bengallee for a waiter.

Having possessed themselves of these important items of information, the young gentlemen began to deliberate as to their future plans and future prospects, and after a good deal of conversation

they determined to spend the remainder of the day where they were, and not to part on the following morning until such time as it should be found expedient to repair to Dum-Dum, the head-quarters of their regiment.

So having procured bedrooms, and made some further observations upon the mosquito curtains, enveloping their bed, the bathing-rooms, the mats, and other things of that sort, which are antiEnglish in their effect, the young gentlemen sent out to hire a buggy to take a drive on the "course," or grand mall of Calcutta, where people drive up and down from six o'clock till dark, seeing, being seen, talking scandal, and criticizing their friends' bonnets.

Our griffins had just made a most elaborate toilet, and the buggy was announced as ready, when down came the rain in torrents, pouring and streaming with such unabating assiduity, that after standing at the window for three quarters of an hour, the young gentlemen discovered that it was the "rainy season," and deferred their drive on the course sine die, Julian Jenks, as a matter of course, declaring that Calcutta was "a confounded hole."

CHAPTER III.

Containing very little that the Indian Reader does not know very well already.

WHEN Peregrine Pultuney went up to bed that night (a step, by the way, which he did not take, until he had previously taken rather more than two bottles of claret inwardly, to drink success to his Indian carcer) he found that a difficulty awaited him somewhat similar to that which, at an earlier period of the day, had opposed his entrance into the palankin, and which was, in fact, nothing more nor less, than an utter ignorance as to the best means of getting into it—a circumstance that might induce some of our readers to suppose that our hero was partially intoxicated, which would be not only highly injurious to his reputation, but at the same time highly unjust; for a person who has never been made previously cognizant of such matters, may well wonder how to insinuate himself into a bed, which is surrounded on every side by tightlydrawn and tightly-tucked-in gauze curtains, to open

which for half a minute, he is credibly informed, will be certain misery, and sleeplessness and irritation to his unfortunate self for the whole of the night.

But here, as though to exemplify the truth of that striking aphorism, which says that "virtue is its own reward," Peer Khan came to the rescue, with a strange-looking article in his hand, somewhat resembling a Bavarian broom out of curl, or a horse-tail at the end of a stick of sealing-wax, and with this article, called in India a chowry (they do have such queer names for things there), he set to work after a fashion indicative of the most praiseworthy assiduity and zeal, whisking and flapping about the bed with the utmost energy for the space of at least five minutes, at the end of which time he lifted up about an inch-and-a-half of the gauze curtain, and having made an aperture thereby sufficiently large to admit an undersized cockroach to wriggle into it, he desired his master to get in as fast as he possibly could.

Peregrine was at first disposed to reason upon the impossibility of doing as he was bid, but upon reflecting that greater difficulties than that had been surmounted ere then by perseverance, he resolved to make an introition, the result of which resolution was that, after an arduous struggle, Peregrine Pultuney found himself stretched on the hardest of hard mattrasses, with a couple of pillows, which felt precisely like so many petrified meal

sacks, such, (it is but just to the hotel-keeper to state) being the characteristics of a first-rate Indian bed.

"D-n it," muttered Peregrine, as he tossed himself about, and at last settled himself flat on his back, as the best mode of avoiding the attrition of his angles against the hard bedding: "one must needs be used to sleep on the London pavements to stomach such tough lying as this, the first night after one's arrival. I might as well sleep with my head upon a door-step-every bit of it-that I might," and beguiling the time with these reflections and divers others of a similar nature, Peregrine Pultuney, in less than half an hour, contrived to swear himself fast asleep.

With that rapid promotion, which officers in the Bengal Artillery or the Bengal any thing else, are never favoured with except in their dreams, Peregrine Pultuney had just risen to the rank of Major General with the additional distinction of a K. C. B.ship and the something more than distinction of the head of the Military Secretariat, when he was startled from the pleasant delusion, by a loud voice, which, instead of greeting him with the titles aforesaid, cried out, close to his ear, "Supernumerary Second Lieutenant Peregrine Pultuney-jump out of bed!"

The speaker, as may readily be imagined, was no other than Supernumerary Second-Lieutenant Julian Jenks, who had made his way into his friend's room