Wealthy Hindoos of low degree eagerly aspire to the honor of mixing
their puddle blood with the quintessentially clarified fluid that
glorifies the circulatory systems of these demigods, and the result is a
very pretty and profitable branch of the Brahmin business,--_Kooleen_
marrying sometimes as many as fifty of such nut-brown maids of baser
birth, in consideration of a substantial dowry attached to each bride,
and a solemn obligation, accepted and signed by the paternal Puddle,
forever to feed at home her and her improved progeny. So the fifty
continue to roost in the old paternal coops, while Kooleen, like a
pampered Brahmapootra, struts, in pompous patronage, from one to the
other, his sense of duty satisfied when he has left a crow and a cackle
behind him. It is said that many fine fowls of the Brahmin breed, who do
not happen to be Kooleens, complain of the monopoly.
So Karlee had but one wife,--the handy, thrifty ayah already mentioned.
She was nine and he twelve years old when they were betrothed, and they
never saw each other until they were married. A professional
match-maker, or go-between,--female, of course,--was employed by the
parents to negotiate terms and arrange the preliminaries; and when
horoscopes had been compared and the stars found all right, with a
little consequential chaffering, the hymeneal instruments were
"executed.
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