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A cooling douche with water kept at a low temperature in the celebrated porous bottles, a change of underclothing, and a punkah-wallah vigorously engaged in creating an artificial breeze, soon change things for the better.

A silver throne having been wheeled out on the portico by manikin bhearers, the manikin Rajah, attended by his manikin moonshee, and as many manikin courtiers as the tamasha property-man can supply, comes forth in his wooden way, and seats himself on the throne in wooden state; a manikin hookah-badar, or pipe-server, and a manikin chattah-wallah, or umbrella-bearer, take up their wooden position behind, while a manikin punkah-wallah fans, woodenly, his manikin Highness, and the manikin courtiers dance wooden attendance around.

A large reclining chair is placed immediately beneath the punkah, and a punkah-wallah, ambitious to please, causes the frilled hangings of this desirable and necessary piece of furniture to wave vigorously to and fro but a foot or eighteen inches above my head. A smiling servant kneels at my feet and proceeds to knead and "groom" the muscles of the legs.

Prickly heat has seized hold upon me with a promptness that is anything but agreeable; the thermometer in my room at Clarke's Hotel registers 108 deg. at midnight. A punkah-wallah is indispensable night and day. A couple of days are spent in affixing a new set of tires to my wheel and seeing something of the lions of Lahore.

My punkah-wallah here is a regular automaton he has acquired the valuable accomplishment of pulling the punkah-string back and forth in his sleep; he keeps it up some time after I have quitted the room in the morning, until a comrade comes round and wakes him up. For three days the rains continue almost without interruption, raining as much as seven inches in one night.

"I wish you were," growled Glyn. "I should like to set a punkah-wallah to pick up a chatty of water and douse it all over you." "He'd feel very uncomfortable afterwards," said Glyn, "if I got hold of him. Oh, bother! bother! bother!" he cried, sitting up in bed. "Now then, preach away. What do you want to say about your ugly old belt?"

Slung from the ceiling in long rows over tables or desks are the "punkahs," or fans, which a "punkah-wallah" outside in the veranda pulls to and fro with a rope in order to keep the hot air moving, and prevent the flies and mosquitoes from settling.

Punkahs are going continually at meal times, and if one sits down to write in the saloon, the "punkah-wallah" spies one out and begins his refreshing labors at once. But we took on board a host of mosquitoes at Saigon, and the nights are consequently so intolerable that I weary for the day.

Some hotels and residential bungalows have discarded punkahs for mechanical fans; but the complaint is that the electricity costs more than the punkah-wallah the fan-boy of the East. "Ah, yes; but your wallah frequently falls asleep at his work," you remark to the resident. "True, and your electricity frequently fails us," is the reply.

If a blanket, sufficiently heavy to impede respiration, be placed upon the face of a sleeping person, we know that it will be immediately pushed away. More than this, complicated movements can be carried out; the postilion can sleep on horseback; the punkah-wallah may work his punkah and at the same time enjoy a slumber; a weary mother may sleep, and yet automatically rock her infant's cradle.