FOUR-HANDED INDIAN CHILDREN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 24, 17 June 1893, Page 575

FOUR-HANDED INDIAN CHILDREN.

At Berhampoor, where the largest ivory-carving trade of Asia is done, the children, who are taught from infancy that they are to do ivory-carving as soon as they get old enough, are early instructed as to the use and handling of the carving tools. These tools are not many, and they are so rough and plain, that you would wonder how such exquisite bits of carving as come from Berhampoor could be done by them. At first the children are given elephants to do, because elephants are considered quite simple to carve. Afterward they do camels, bullocks, boats, tigers, carts, and sets of chess ■ men. A Berhampoor boy’s first lesson in ivory - carving consists in learning how to pick up the tools with his feet. After he has really begun the work of a carver, he would feel greatly ashamed

if he were obliged to drop his work to pick up a tool which had fallen to the floor. After a time, he becomes so expert in picking up things with his feet, that he does not consider it any accomplishment at all to hold all his tools in this way, and he reaches for them, handing them to bitnself in a queer way which would make you exclaim : • Surely these Indian boys have four hands 1’

Teacher (to the class in chemistry): ’What does sea water contain besides the sodium chloride that we. have mentioned?’ Bobby Smith : ‘ Fish, sir. ’