The things we do!

He goes to
Leadenhall Street in an omnibus, and walks back from the City for
exercise. I have known some who have had maid-servants to wait on them at
dinner. I have met scores who look as florid and rosy as any British
squire who has never left his paternal beef and acres. They do not wear
nankeen jackets in summer. Their livers are not out of order any more;
and as for hookahs, I dare swear there are not two now kept alight within
the bills of mortality; and that retired Indians would as soon think of
smoking them, as their wives would of burning themselves on their
husbands' bodies at the cemetery, Kensal Green, near to the Tyburnian
quarter of the city which the Indian world at present inhabits. It used
to be Baker Street and Harley Street; it used to be Portland Place, and
in more early days Bedford Square, where the Indian magnates flourished;
districts which have fallen from their pristine state of splendour now,
even as Agra, and Benares, and Lucknow, and Tippoo Sultan's city are
fallen.


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