Note 79 — IX.

The writer in his younger days remembers to have been once taken up on a Kali Poojah night by a gang of infamous drunkards in the very heart of Calcutta. When he was returning home about midnight in company with some of his friends after seeing the támáshá, he being the youngest of the lot had necessarily lagged behind, when to his utter dismay he was suddenly laid hold of by a man who smelt strongly of liquor and carried him hurriedly into an empty house on the roadside. The first shout at the very threshold was,—"here we have got a moori", i. e. a victim; the ruffians, who had their faces covered with clothes, jumped up at the announcement, and one of them accosted him in the following manner—"what money and pice have you got?" The writer replied a few an his pice only. No Rupees? asked another; whereupon they all fell to searching his person and stripped him of all his clothes, which consisted of a dhooty, a chádur and a jamá, and finally bade him go. As a matter of course he was obliged to return home almost in a state of nudity, one of his friends lending him a chádur on the occasion. In these days the introduction of gas light and the posting of constables on the highway have greatly checked such ruffianism.