one of the palace towers, and Wednesday evening there was a magnificent,
display of pyrotechnics around an artificial lake about a mile from the
palace. The latter cost about twenty-five thousand dollars. Its effect
on men, animals, and the tropical plants was such that a man from the
North found it difficult to realize that he was still on this earth of
ours, and not far away in the fairy world of fiction.

[Illustration: COLLEGE BUILDING.]

Reality is so wonderful in India that I have hardly dared to tell the
following without gradually preparing my reader for it. This young
prince, whose guest I was and with whom I talked a good deal, is a poor
foundling, having been adopted by the old prince, who died childless,
and by the consent of the English government he was made his sole heir.
His landed estates were so large that he paid two million two hundred
thousand dollars to the English government in annual taxes on the income
from his lands! How large his total income is, nobody knows. Inside the
palace walls, which were protected by a strong body-guard night and day,
were deep subterranean vaults with secret entrances, where gold and
jewels were concealed in such quantities as may be imagined only when it
is remembered that during a period of three hundred years the family has
been accustomed to accumulate these treasures by at least three "lacs
rupees," or one hundred and sixty thousand dollars, a year. But during
the same time millions upon millions of people have starved to death in
the principality of Burdwan, and even now it is safe to say that
nine-tenths of the people who cultivate the soil and live on the estates
of the maharajah and pay him tribute are so poor that they could
scarcely sustain their life a single month in case of drought or
inundations.

To describe the whole fete would require a whole book, and I therefore
select the installation ceremony, which, by the way, was the most
important of the festivities. It took place in a small mango forest,
about a mile from the palace. A pleasant country road, decorated with
banners and spanned by triumphal arches covered with flowers, led to the
place. A tent pavilion sixty feet long and forty feet wide was erected
about a hundred yards from the road. The tent was supported by forty
pillars covered with silver tinsel paper, and the canvas consisted of
heavy linen woven in many-colored squares, which were about three feet
each way. The sides of the tent were