een Alexandra of England, which is said
to have been of surpassing richness and beauty, was woven and
embroidered in a factory upon the Chandni Chauk, and the merchant
who made it is constantly receiving orders from the different
courts of Europe and from the leading dressmakers of London,
Paris and Vienna. He told us that Mrs. Leland Stanford had
commissioned him to furnish the museum of her university in
California the finest possible samples of different styles of
Indian embroidery, and his workmen were then engaged in producing
them. Her contract, he said, amounted to more than $60,000. Lady
Curzon is his best customer, for she not only orders all of the
material for her state gowns from him, but has brought him enough
orders from the ladies of the British court to keep his shop
busy for five years. He told us that Lady Curzon designed the
coronation robe of Queen Alexandra; he declared that she had
the rarest taste of any woman he knew, and that she was the best
dressed woman in the world--an opinion shared by other good judges.

[Illustration: A CORNER IN DEHLI]

He spread upon the floor wonderful samples of the skill and taste
of his artists, brocades embroidered with jewels for the ceremonial
robes of native princes; silks and satins whose surface was concealed
by patterns wrought in gold and silver thread. And everything is
done by men. Women do not embroider in India. He keeps eighty
men embroiderers constantly employed, and pays them an average of
18 cents a day. The most famous of his artists, those who design
as well as execute the delicate and costly garnishings, the men
who made the coronation robe of the British queen, receive the
munificent compensation of 42 cents a day. That is the maximum
paid for such work. Apprentices who do the filling in and coarser
work and have not yet acquired sufficient skill and experience
to undertake more important tasks are paid 8 cents a day and
work twelve hours for that.

Delhi is the principal distributing point for the famous Cashmere
shawls which are woven of the hair of camels, goats and sheep
in the province of Cashmere, which lies to the northward about
300 miles. They are brought packed in panniers on the backs of
camels. I was told at Delhi that the foreign demand for Cashmere
shawls has almost entirely ceased, that a very few are shipped
from India nowadays because in Europe and America they are no
longer fashionable. Hence prices have gone down, the weav