them lose their poise, and stumble in their walks. By the advice of the Bramins, they afterwards tied their petticoats about their legs with little black ribbons. The gay part of the sex found this expedient ridiculous, and publickly declared, that it incommoded their respiration, and threw them into the vapours. This prodigy was attended with happy consequences; it occasioned a number of marriages, or somewhat like them, and a crowd of conversions. All those, who had disagreeable buttocks, ran headlong into the religious party, and took little black ribbons. Four missions of Bramins would not have made so many proselytes.

"We had scarcely got rid of this trial, when we underwent another, less universal indeed, but not less instructive. The young girls, one and all, from thirteen to eighteen, nineteen, twenty years of age, and upwards, rose on a fine summer's morning, the middle finger caught, guess where, madam?" says Selim to the favorite.