Hindustani, Bengali, Persian, nor English, and as we are similarly ignorant of his own exotic tongue, his son - а priggish youth from the local High School-comes to our assistance as an interpreter. The stripling in question is chastely attired in white buckskin cricketing boots, navy blue knickerbockers, and a football jersey; the whole tastefully crowned by a red crimson smoking cap, adorned with a sky-blue silken tassel. He is the New India personified, and we mentally congratulate the Education Department on the finished product of their care and culture. Strangely enough, his English is delivered with a hideous Cockney accent... where in the world did he pick it up? Not - we feel sure -from his official teachers, for they are purists and precisians of the most fanatic order.

'Fawther sez,' begins this oriental Chevalier, 'as 'ow 'e's very pleased ter meet yer.'

'Give your father my compliments,' we reply, 'and'- here we very unwisely attempt to be jocular-'tell him that I've come here to-night to loot his money for the war.'

The youth he is exactly like one's mental conception of the learned pig -babbles something excitedly into his parent's ear. Goodness knows what he is saying, but from the ludicrous look of horror that suddenly overspreads that merchant's features, we can only imagine that his son has translated our message literally. We try to be pleasant to the learned pig, and make observations about the beauty of the festival and the happiness of the crowd.

'Ho!' he replies compassionately. "These h'are h'only h'ignorant h'agriculturalists, h'all h'innocent of h'English h'enlightenment, h'indulging h'in h'antique heathen h'idolatry.'

We gasp at the wealth of his aspi

-

as

rates, and nearly follow his lead though it were a game-by replying that we love our love with haitch because he is 'andsome.

Casting the dust of the learned pig's home from off our feet, we turn into a small marquee near a booming temple, where a score of Gurkha officers are providing refreshment for the consolation of their friends. Excusing our action on the plea that we too, at more normal moments, belong to the military free-masonry, we enter uninvited, and are made welcome for the sake of our uniform, if not for ourselves. An aged and retired Gurkha Subadar, dressed in the rifle green of his old corps, comes forward, tremulously jingling with seven war medals, and offers us a seat. He informs us that he is over a hundred years old, and we see no reason to doubt his statement. Besides his war medals, he wears decorations for loyalty and gallantry during the Indian Mutiny, the Afghan campaign, and a Burmese expedition. A fine old face, yellow, rugged, wrinkled, and Mongolianlooking, and he still holds himself as straight as an arrow. He proceeds to introduce us to three or four generations of his descendants, all of whom, like their forbear, are officers in Gurkha regiments.

Their villages, they explain, are across the border in Nepaul, so they are allies of the British rather than fellow subjects, a fact of which they are not a little proud. They offer us rum and tobacco and discuss the war professionally. The youngest-a truculent cock-sparrow-like little figure with the eternal Gurkha grin - lost his arm at Suvla Bay and is still on sick leave, as the stump will not heal. He tells us quietly how his company fought alongside some New Zealanders, and of how together they led the attack, capturing hill number so and so

until mistakenly shelled by the fire of our supporting fleet, both were compelled to evacuate the positions which they had so hardly won. 'And now,' he concludes briefly, 'I'm home again after seeing the whole world.'

'Ho! ho!' laughs his gallant old grandsire in the corner; but I too thought I had seen the whole world after I had marched to Lucknow in '57! Aye,' he continues reminiscently, 'those were the days for a soldier!... You never saw Jan Nikalsain or Lard Gough!' And he mumbles on about the past glories of this or that surprise and rout, when the dusty native columns from the loyal Punjaub swung their thirty sweating miles a daythrough seven hells of sunstroke, hells of sunstroke, cholera, and smallpox - in order to break the iron stronghold of the Pandy mutineers at Delhi, or to avenge white women at bloody Nana-betrayed Cawnpore.

We examine shell relics and a Turkish revolver-spoils from off the battlefield-drink their healths, and say farewell.

From an adjacent courtyard come the roll of drums, the explosion of fireworks, and a thin, high-pitched falsetto voice uplifted in unceasing and monotonous song. It is a Hindu nautch, and our relentless Indian companion - a Bengali civil official, whose presence by our side the whole evening we have hitherto been discourteous enough to ignore insists that it is our duty to attend it. From an English point of view the Indian nautch is not beautiful. The performers wriggle rather than dance, and the general impression is uncanny rather than lovely. As the dark ghostly figures shudder and ripple in muscular contortions, you recall De Quincey's opium-born dreams of eerie Hindus and Celestials, whose very children seemed to possess souls older than those of European gray

VOL. 13-NO. 655

beards. The 'star' lady of the performance is gorgeously coiffured but extremely plain: her tout ensemble recalls the chic but ugly lady-in-waiting to the Empress Eugenie, who frankly described herself as a Singe à la mode.

In a corner of the courtyard some Brahmin priests are blessing the idols that are about to be carried shoulderhigh in a religious procession. To the Hindu of this part of India the blessing of these idols has a sacramental significance. At one moment the lifeless dolls are things of common clay, but the priest of orthodoxy can breathe divinity into the creature by the repetition of half a dozen mantras and occult words of power. The last act of preparing the idols for public worship is the fitting into the sockets of their jeweled eyes. This can only be done by approaching the god from behind, else—as every Hindu child knows well the judgment of heaven falls and blasts the irreverent. Finally, when the Divinity has been coaxed into material revelation, the tinsel-clad dolls are paraded through the streets. and are devoutly worshiped by the crowd. Let, however, no aggressive Christian mock the heathen for their simple piety; for is it not written of comely, roguish, and flute-playing young Krishna the most human of Hindu gods *- that they who worship idols also worship me'?

The old gods of Hind are not over particular about nice points in dogmatic theology-devoutness qua se, however misdirected, being the first criterion of spiritual worth in India. For this reason Brahminism never quarrels with newer religions; it philosophically absorbs them. For all practical purposes it has already absorbed Indian Buddhism; it is attempting not al

together unsuccessfully to absorb Sikhism; and were the English missionary to leave the country, it would similarly absorb Indian Christianity.

Amid the now-religiously inclined crowd are men with money boxes collecting for the Mesopotamian wounded. An aged crone, leaning on a gnarled stick, inquires as to the meaning of these collecting boxes, for she has already paid her seemly dues to the priests. It is explained to her that money is required for wounded Indian soldiers, but for whom this peaceful valley might be a crimson shambles. 'And do they lack money in the war hospitals?' she cries tremulously; 'are the sahibs then so poor?' 'Aye, mother; otherwise, why do they bid us collect?' She fumbles desperately in her ragged old bosom, and produces a bent anna or penny piece. 'I had been keeping it,' she explains apologetically, to buy my sick grandchild a fairing, but it is not right that strong men should die comfortless and alone without tobacco, sweetmeats, or opium.

Surely the widow at the Temple, who cast her last mite into the treasury, earned a smile of divine recognition no more dazzling than that which to-night must have been vouchsafed this poor old 'heathen' beggar woman?

The lights are now growing dim, because midnight is a late hour for a people ever astir long before dawn.

Blackwood's Magazine

The unlovely voice of the prowling night watchman mingles hideously with the dismal wail of the nocturnal jackal, and the malevolent brain-fever bird shrieks mocking defiance at the weary, who, tossing upon the hot rooftops, fain would sleep.

The narrow streets are suddenly emptied of excited humanity, and the stink of stale incense, burned butter, and sacred cow-dung offends the nostrils of the Night.

India the great demi-mondaine among countries- now yawns voluptuously, and, her painted face and garish tawdriness half-hidden by the merciful darkness, she looks immorally beautiful, as smiling inscrutably she falls asleep.

Our motor car climbs laboriously up the firefly-speckled mountain pass, its acetylene lamps staring warily across abysmal precipices of vertical shadow. Before we reach our Japanese-contrived earthquake-proof cottage on the summit, a beautiful and fearless panther bounds silently across our path. His jade-jeweled eyes, milk-white fangs, and hot scarlet palate are all vividly lit up by our great dazzling head-lights: good luck and good hunting, little bronze brother for you the rustling night has a thousand coquettish whispers; but for us dullereared mortals 'the fun of the fair' is over, and nothing now remains except heavy-lidded and boring-sleep.

"TERRIBUL massacres! 'Orribulatrocities!!' howled the newsboy, and from the Extryspheshul I learned that in an obscure corner of Europe, the Plondites had made a cruel and dastardly attack upon their subject members of the Bobianite Church. A leading article assured us fervently that 'these people were Christian just as we are.' The British public had never before heard of the sect, but, reassured by the above statement, its great heart beat violently. The Bishop of London, from the pulpit, implored the Bobians to take a bright view of death. The Lord Mayor raised a fund. And it was as a relief agent that I, who a year or two before had made a tour in the neighborhood, found myself entering the town which was the centre of the disturbed district.

Outwardly all was quiet. Only the presence of a large number of the Plondite gendarmerie in their pink and canary uniforms showed things were not quite normal. The Gouvernador of the town received me politely. Our Foreign Office had arranged that complete liberty of action should be given to the relief agents, with the sole proviso that they should not undertake any political or revolutionary propaganda. My passport was duly visé, and I was directed to the Palace of the Cephepisk or Head of the Bobianite Church, a bizarre building in the outskirts of the town.

After some delay I gained admission

by a postern and was directed to wait in an ante-room while my credentials were examined. Meanwhile, I looked with interest at the barbaric scheme of decoration. Weirdly waving lines of blue and green covered the walls. The floor was covered by a rich blue carpet patterned with green blobs and waving arms. Doors and ceiling even were similarly adorned.

The Cephepisk himself entered shortly and greeted me with great cordiality. He was a reverend personage clad in a long black robe embroidered with a design similar to that on the carpet and the walls. And his silver locks flowed on his shoulders.

I rose as he entered. He waved me courteously to a seat saying, through his secretary, who had learned to speak English perfectly at an American Mission school: 'I greet you as a brother. It is true that there are certain doctrinal differences between your Church and mine

Pope!'

but we both hate the

Having thus determined a common Christian meeting ground, he was ready, he said, to give me all information, but first he must thank the great British nation which had come forward so nobly to the aid of what all the world must soon recognize as the only true Church.

I expressed a hope that the world was becoming more tolerant upon religious questions, and observing that he received this with marked coldness,

hastened to condole with him upon the massacre and to hope that the number of victims had been exaggerated.

'Unfortunately,' he sighed, 'the massacre has not succeeded so well as we had hoped. We had reckoned that at least three quarters of the population must perish. In that case the intervention of the Powers would have been inevitable; this land would undoubtedly have been freed and the ancient Tsardom of Bobia restored. As it is, more than half have survived and will remain under the Plondite yoke till further and more successful efforts are made.' He sighed again and gazed at the ceiling.

'But — but,' I gasped, considerably taken aback, 'surely it was not I mean I understood that there had been a deliberate and quite unprovoked attack on the part of the ruling race. Would His Grace kindly explain how the massacre came about?' 'It was brought about,' said the Cephepisk solemnly, by the Cuttlefish Crisis. No more flagrant insult to religious liberty could be imagined. And that it was planned by Plonda is indubitable.'

"The Cuttlefish Crisis?' I murmured mystified.

'Are you then uninformed as to the tenets of any church but your own?' asked the Cephepisk with lofty

scorn.

'Oh, no,' I replied hastily, 'on the contrary, I've studied the question of early heresi-schis I mean, of I mean, of course, churches, with great interest. But somehow the precise tenets of the Bobians have escaped my memory.'

'Strange,' said he, 'for the Bobianite is the one authentic Christian Church and was founded in the first century by Bobe or Bobian, a poor fisher lad, a disciple of St. Peter, and by him baptized. Embarking as a sailor on a trading vessel he succeeded in the space of a fortnight in converting four of the

crew so truly, that, when the ship was wrecked shortly afterwards, Bobian and his four converts alone were washed ashore, clinging to the mast and singing hymns which he specially composed for the occasion. The pagan natives, touched by Bobian's charm of manner, submitted joyfully to the rite of baptism in large numbers. But, unfortunately, owing to their deficient grasp of the language, they seem to have failed to comprehend the full meaning of Bobian's sermons. As Christmas Day approached, he saw, to his horror, that it was a feast day also of the natives. They began erecting altars and preparing offerings for a graven image of a highly obscene character.

'Bobian not merely refused to take any part in these ceremonies, he boldly excommunicated all those who did so, with the result that the whole population turned against him and his followers and drove them into the wilderness to starve.

'For a week they wandered without food or water, borne up solely by the knowledge of their own complete righteousness, and upon Christmas Eve Bobian fell exhausted among his followers. It was then that the miracle occurred. When he was at his last gasp an Angel appeared to him saying merely, "Seek thy salvation upon the seashore." And Bobian arose and went there. And as Christmas Day dawned a wave broke at his feet, casting up a cuttlefish of enormous size. The starving men stewed it in the large shells which abounded upon the beach and thus initiated the Christmas feast of the Bobians.

'Nor did the miracle cease there. The pagans, coming a fortnight later, were struck dumb when they beheld each wave that broke casting up a cuttlefish at the feet of each true believer. Bursting into tears, they threw