ht strong enough to read by; each had a green-cloth
attachment by which it could be covered when the light should be no
longer needed.

While we talked outside with friends, Barney and Satan placed the
hand-baggage, books, fruits, and soda-bottles in the racks, and the
hold-alls and heavy baggage in the closet, hung the overcoats and
sun-helmets and towels on the hooks, hoisted the two bed-shelves up out
of the way, then shouldered their bedding and retired to the third class.

Now then, you see what a handsome, spacious, light, airy, homelike place
it was, wherein to walk up and down, or sit and write, or stretch out and
read and smoke. A central door in the forward end of the compartment
opened into a similar compartment. It was occupied by my wife and
daughter. About nine in the evening, while we halted a while at a
station, Barney and Satan came and undid the clumsy big hold-alls, and
spread the bedding on the sofas in both compartments--mattresses, sheets,
gay coverlets, pillows, all complete; there are no chambermaids in India
--apparently it was an office that was never heard of. Then they
closed the communicating door, nimbly tidied up our place, put the
night-clothing on the beds and the slippers under them, then returned
to their own quarters.

January 31. It was novel and pleasant, and I stayed awake as long as I
could, to enjoy it, and to read about those strange people the Thugs. In
my sleep they remained with me, and tried to strangle me. The leader of
the gang was that giant Hindoo who was such a picture in the strong light
when we were leaving those Hindoo betrothal festivities at two o'clock in
the morning--Rao Bahadur Baskirao Balinkanje Pitale, Vakeel to the
Gaikwar of Baroda. It was he that brought me the invitation from his
master to go to Baroda and lecture to that prince--and now he was
misbehaving in my dreams. But all things can happen in dreams. It is
indeed as the Sweet Singer of Michigan says--irrelevantly, of course, for
the one and unfailing great quality which distinguishes her poetry from
Shakespeare's and makes it precious to us is its stern and simple
irrelevancy:

My heart was gay and happy,
This was ever in my mind,
There is better times a coming,
And I hope some day to find
Myself capable of composing,
It was my heart's delight
To compose on a sentimental subject