[I]t was by no means an uncommon incident of a stroll through London streets to encounter a lean, shivery foreign person with a complexion the colour of curry-powder, chiefly clad in linen and presenting an appearance, generally speaking, of profound and chronic discomfiture. This saffron-hued alien, when shambling along the pavement of a crowded thoroughfare, was rarely vocal or instrumental ; but if you happened to meet him in fashionable or suburban regions, far away from the bustle and roar of the business centres, you invariably found him singing the songs of his native land to the accompaniment of a peculiarly depressing oblong drum, shaped like a rolly-polly pudding, upon either skin-clad end of which he beat incessantly with his knuckles.