aled into court on the charge that he is rightfully
no prince at all, but a pauper peasant; that the real prince died when
two and one-half years old; that the death was concealed, and a peasant
child smuggled into the royal cradle, and that this present incumbent was
that smuggled substitute. This is the very material that so many
oriental tales have been made of.

The case of that great prince, the Gaikwar of Baroda, is a reversal of
the theme. When that throne fell vacant, no heir could be found for some
time, but at last one was found in the person of a peasant child who was
making mud pies in a village street, and having an innocent good time.
But his pedigree was straight; he was the true prince, and he has reigned
ever since, with none to dispute his right.

Lately there was another hunt for an heir to another princely house, and
one was found who was circumstanced about as the Gaikwar had been. His
fathers were traced back, in humble life, along a branch of the ancestral
tree to the point where it joined the stem fourteen generations ago, and
his heirship was thereby squarely established. The tracing was done by
means of the records of one of the great Hindoo shrines, where princes on
pilgrimage record their names and the date of their visit. This is to
keep the prince's religious account straight, and his spiritual person
safe; but the record has the added value of keeping the pedigree
authentic, too.

When I think of Bombay now, at this distance of time, I seem to have a
kaleidoscope at my eye; and I hear the clash of the glass bits as the
splendid figures change, and fall apart, and flash into new forms, figure
after figure, and with the birth of each new form I feel my skin crinkle
and my nerve-web tingle with a new thrill of wonder and delight. These
remembered pictures float past me in a sequence of contracts; following
the same order always, and always whirling by and disappearing with the
swiftness of a dream, leaving me with the sense that the actuality was
the experience of an hour, at most, whereas it really covered days, I
think.

The series begins with the hiring of a "bearer"--native man-servant--a
person who should be selected with some care, because as long as he is in
your employ he will be about as near to you as your clothes.

In India your day may be said to begin with the "bearer's" knock on the
bedroom door, accompanied by a formula of, words--a formula which is
intended to mean