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BOMBAY
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long residence of the fire-worshiping Parsis in India. The conventional menu of a London wedding breakfast, with champagne and ices, was served to the company of Anglo-Indian officials, foreign consuls and merchants, a Portuguese bishop, and some Japanese naval officers and American visitors. The Parsi ladies and children were served in the large marquees on the lawn, where ceremonial dishes were added to the foreign dainties. Each had a palm-leaf for a plate, and a vegetarian repast was partaken of without knives or forks. Each visitor was garlanded with tuberoses and sprinkled with rose-water when he left, but the gilded pan, or betel-nut part of Hindu ceremony, was omitted.

A few days later we attended a second Parsi wedding, where still more of the old ceremonial was observed. There was the same garden company of men in white ceremonial dress, and a drawing-room full of Parsi ladies covered with jewels and draped in silks of every delicate color. The bride seemed not to like the way in which her veil was pulled and rumpled by clumsy hands, and sweetmeats thrust in her mouth, and with some emphasis unwound her sari herself and wrapped around her the silver-bordered one given by the groom's mother. The bride and groom sat in chairs facing each other, and the priest wound around and bound them together with the symbolical white cord, and then bound them further with the groom's kamarband. A veil was held between them at the next stage, and finally they ate rice from the same dish, the groom feeding the bride with his fingers. There was a