, constitute the ingredients of the
currie. Some add to these ghea, or melted butter, and cocoa-nut milk. By
the cocoa-nut milk, I do not mean the water of the cocoa-nut.
This--except in the very young cocoa-nut, when it is a most delicious
beverage--is never used. The milk is squeezed from the _meat_ of the
cocoa-nut, after it has been reduced to a pulp by means of an indented
circular iron which they use for this purpose.
After the husband has eaten, the wife brings water for him to wash his
hands. This being done, she supplies him with vettalay, paakku,
shell-lime, and tobacco, which he puts into his mouth as his dessert.
The vettalay is a very spicy leaf. Why they use paakku, I do not know.
It is a nut, which they cut into small pieces, but it has not much
taste. Sometimes the wife brings her husband a segar. This people, I am
sorry to say, are great smokers and chewers, practices of which I hope
that you, my dear children, will never be guilty. In Ceylon, it is
customary for females to smoke. Frequently, after the husband has smoked
for a while, he hands the segar to his wife. She then puts it into her
mouth, and smokes.
Several years ago, one of the schoolmasters in that island became a
Christian.
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