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Updated: June 22, 2025
The Mugger continued: "Yes, by Allahabad one lay still in the slack-water and let twenty go by to pick one; and, above all, the English were not cumbered with jewellery and nose-rings and anklets as my women are nowadays. To delight in ornaments is to end with a rope for a necklace, as the saying is. All the muggers of all the rivers grew fat then, but it was my Fate to be fatter than them all.
The Nepaulese women wore bracelets and necklaces of Indian coins, besides silver anklets, finger- and nose-rings, gold earrings and beads, and each had also suspended from her neck a silver snuff-box. These boxes were three or four inches square, made of the purest metal, and handsomely carved and embossed.
The savage humbug was dumbfounded, but quickly recovering his presence of mind, saved his home-reputation by explaining to the red gentlemen in breech-cloths and nose-rings, that the Yankee ate so much salt that curses wouldn't take hold on him at all.
I sez, "I guess I won't buy any nose-rings, Josiah, my nose is pretty big anyway." "Yes," he interrupted me eagerly, "they wouldn't be becomin', Samantha, and be in the way eatin' sweet corn on the ear and such." There are lots of men carryin' round serpents, and I sez to Josiah, "Who under the sun would want to buy a snake unless they wuz crazy?"
For notwithstanding the numberless absurdities into which this copyism has led the people, from nose-rings to ear-rings, from painted faces to beauty-spots, from shaven heads to powdered wigs, from filed teeth and stained nails to bell-girdles, peaked shoes, and breeches stuffed with bran, it must yet be concluded, that as the strong men, the successful men, the men of will, intelligence, and originality, who have got to the top, are, on the average, more likely to show judgment in their habits and tastes than the mass, the imitation of such is advantageous.
The Indians knew nothing about these. Their ornaments consisted of ear-rings, nose-rings, bracelets, and necklaces made out of shells or fish-bones or shining stones, which were very common in that neighborhood. Their faces were smeared with heavy daubs of paint. Each one had a cloak thrown over his shoulders, and he also wore a head-dress made of feathers or quills.
They stand at each end of a piece of grassy lawn, with their knots of admirers around them, descanting on their various points, and with the proud trainer, who is at once keeper and medicine man, holding them by the cord which is passed through their nose-rings. Until you have seen the water-buffalo stripped for the fight, it is impossible to conceive how handsome the ugly brute can look.
The men of Santa Cruz, too, wear disfiguring nose-rings of tortoise-shell hanging down over their mouths, so large that when eating they have to be lifted up out of the way with the left hand. Another ugly habit is the chewing of betel, the nut of the areca palm, which is mixed with pepper leaves and lime.
And here and there, in the midst of this hurly-burly, and seemingly undisturbed by it, sat great groups of natives on the bare stone floor, young, slender brown women, old, gray wrinkled women, little soft brown babies, old men, young men, boys; all poor people, but all the females among them, both big and little, bejeweled with cheap and showy nose-rings, toe-rings, leglets, and armlets, these things constituting all their wealth, no doubt.
The wide verandas wuz very pleasant, with their bamboo chairs and couches and little tables where you could have tea served. Birds of the most beautiful plumage soared and sung in the trees, and butterflies that looked like flowers on wings fluttered about. You can't tell men from wimmen by their clothes. They all wear earrings and bracelets and nose-rings.
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