If none of the preceding please you, you shall have several varietiesof the Soortee tribe anxious to take service with you; nice looking,clean men, with fair complexions. There will be the inevitableunfortunate whose home was burned to ashes two weeks ago, on whichoccasion he lost everything he had, including, of course, all hisvaluable certificates. Another will send in a budget dating from thetroubled times of the mutiny. From them it will appear that he hasserved in almost every capacity and can turn his hand to anything, isespecially good with tiny children, cooks well, and knows Englishthoroughly, having been twice to England with his master. When thisdesirable man is summoned into your presence, you cannot help beingstartled to find how lightly age sits upon him; he looks like twenty-five. As for his knowledge of English, it must be latent, for healways falls back upon his own vernacular for purposes ofconversation. You rashly charge him with having stolen hiscertificates, but he indignantly repels the insinuation. You find adiscrepancy, however, in the name and press him still further,whereupon he retires from his first position to the extent ofadmitting that the papers, though rightfully his, were earned by hisfather. He does not seem to think this detracts much from theirvalue. 0thers will come, with less pronounced characteristics, and,therefore, more perplexing. The Madrassee will be there, with hisspherical turban and his wonderful command of colloquial English; heis supposed to know how to prepare that mysterious luxury, "realMadras curry." Bengal servants are not common in Bombay,fortunately, for they would only add to the perplexity. The largerthe series of specimens which you examine, the more difficult itbecomes to decide to which of them all you should commit yourhappiness. "Characters" are a snare, for the master when partingwith his Boy too often pays off arrears of charity inside hiscertificate; and besides, the prudent Boy always has his papers readto him and eliminates anything detrimental to his interests. Butthere must be marks by which, if you were to study them closely, youmight distinguish the occult qualities of Boys and divide them intogenera and orders. The subject only wants its Linnaeus. If ever Igird myself for my magnum opus, I am determined it shall be a"Compendious Guide to the Classification of Indian Boys."