There is something peculiarly quaint about the arrangement of European furniture in the house of a native gentleman. In the house of an European, the servants are, of course, taught how to arrange tables, chairs, and beds, according to European ideas; but it is otherwise with the servants of a rajah, or native gentleman. The consequence is that in the dining, or drawing-room, you will find a wash-hand stand, and a chest of drawers, and a toilet-table, while in the bed-room you will, perhaps, discover an old piano, an organ, a card-table, or cheffonier. The furniture has, for the most part, been purchased at various sales, and has belonged to officers of all grades, civil and military. There are the tent-table and the camp-stool of the dead ensign, in the same room with the marble-topped table and crimson damask covered easy chair of some luxurious judge. On the mantelpiece you will find a costly clock of the most elegant design and workmanship, and on each side of it, a pair of japan candlesticks, not worth half-a-crown. In this way are arranged the pictures on the walls. Immediately underneath a proof print of Landseer's "Bolton Abbey," or "Hawking," you will observe a sixpenny coloured print of the Duke of Wellington or Napoleon Bonaparte. The pictures, also, have been bought indiscriminately at various sales, and have been as indiscriminately suspended on the walls. There are the print-shop ballet girls intermingled with engravings of the most serious character. Fores's sporting collection with the most classical subjects. Foot-stools, musical-boxes, and elegantly bound books, writing-desks, work-boxes, plated dishes, sugar-basins, and teapots, are arranged in the most grotesque fashion imaginable. Upon an elegant mahogany sideboard you will find decanters and glasses of every description and quality. Upon another sideboard, in the drawing-room, you will find a variety of dinner-services, and earthen fragments thereof, all mixed. There was but one set of rooms at Bhitoor for the reception of "Sahib logue," and this was the set that I then occupied.
I had scarcely made myself comfortable, when the khansamah informed me that dinner was on the table. This was welcome intelligence, for I had not tasted food since morning, and it was half-past five P.M. I sat down to a table twenty feet long (it had originally been the mess table of a cavalry regiment), which was covered with a damask table-cloth of European manufacture, but instead of a dinner-napkin there was a bed-room towel. The soup--for he had everything ready--was served up in a trifle-dish which had formed part of a dessert service belonging to the 9th Lancers--at all events, the arms of that regiment were upon it; but the plate into which I ladled it with a broken tea-cup, was of the old willow pattern. The pilao which followed the soup, was served upon a huge plated dish, but the plate from which I ate it, was of the very commonest description. The knife was a bone-handled affair; the spoon and the fork were of silver, and of Calcutta make. The plated side-dishes, containing vegetables, were odd ones; one was round, the other oval. The pudding was brought in upon a soup-plate of blue and gold pattern, and the cheese was placed before me on a glass dish belonging to a dessert service. The cool claret I drank out of a richly cut champagne glass, and the beer out of an American tumbler, of the very worst quality.