The Government allow me a guard of soldiers; and a sentry, with musket and bayonet, parades up and down the front verandah; they also allow three servants for the use of the church. The soldiers present arms to me and salute; and when any one comes at night, they call out, "Hookum dar?" to which the answer is "Exprin:" these phrases are corruptions of the English. The church is very nicely fitted up; there is a door leading into it from my study, which serves on Sundays as a vestry. The greatest inconvenience here--as in all the churches in India--consists in the punkahs. Over the pulpit, altar, and reading-desk are three small punkahs, and over the body of the building three very large ones, extending over the whole breadth. These are kept constantly in motion, and they sadly intercept the voice of whoever is preaching. The house, being a bungalow, has, of course, only the ground-floor; the roof is a thick thatch, extending over the verandahs, which in England would be called porticoes, and these are supported on thick white columns. The ceilings in a bungalow are nothing but large sheets of canvass whitewashed. As in India people are glad to keep all the doors within the house open, there is placed between the different rooms a framework covered with crimson or green silk, which the natives call a half-door. The beds are nine or ten feet wide, with short posts, on which you may hang mosquito-curtains, which are a sort of large sacks made of gauze, without any opening. They are supported on the posts and tucked in closely all round, so as to prevent the mosquitoes from stinging the people in bed; the only covering, generally, is a sheet, and the gentleman's sleeping-dress is a flannel jacket and a pair of calico drawers with feet to them, to keep off the mosquitoes if they should by chance get inside the curtains. Some people also throw a gauze over the face for the same purpose. There are no feather-beds, but the mattresses are generally stuffed with the fibres from the outside rind of the cocoa-nut, called "coir.". The usual plan is to leave the glass doors (French windows you would call them) all open, but to shut the Venetian blinds, and to have a punkah over your head going all night. At about six in the morning all the glass doors are closed, and kept shut all day to exclude the hot air. If, however, there should be any wind, one of them is opened and a tattie hung up in its place; the tattie is a thick mat the size of the doorway, made of the sweet-scented cuscus-grass; this is kept constantly wetted on the outside.