signing, cooking, measuring out
grain, grinding it, repairing idols--and then the swarm of ragged and
noisy humanity under the horses' feet and everywhere, and the pervading
reek and fume and smell! It was all wonderful and delightful.

Imagine a file of elephants marching through such a crevice of a street
and scraping the paint off both sides of it with their hides. How big
they must look, and how little they must make the houses look; and when
the elephants are in their glittering court costume, what a contrast they
must make with the humble and sordid surroundings. And when a mad
elephant goes raging through, belting right and left with his trunk, how
do these swarms of people get out of the way? I suppose it is a thing
which happens now and then in the mad season (for elephants have a mad
season).

I wonder how old the town is. There are patches of building--massive
structures, monuments, apparently--that are so battered and worn, and
seemingly so tired and so burdened with the weight of age, and so dulled
and stupefied with trying to remember things they forgot before history
began, that they give one the feeling that they must have been a part of
original Creation. This is indeed one of the oldest of the princedoms of
India, and has always been celebrated for its barbaric pomps and
splendors, and for the wealth of its princes.

CHAPTER XLV.

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the
heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Out of the town again; a long drive through open country, by winding
roads among secluded villages nestling in the inviting shade of tropic
vegetation, a Sabbath stillness everywhere, sometimes a pervading sense
of solitude, but always barefoot natives gliding by like spirits, without
sound of footfall, and others in the distance dissolving away and
vanishing like the creatures of dreams. Now and then a string of stately
camels passed by--always interesting things to look at--and they were
velvet-shod by nature, and made no noise. Indeed, there were no noises
of any sort in this paradise. Yes, once there was one, for a moment: a
file of native convicts passed along in charge of an officer, and we
caught the soft clink of their chains. In a retired spot, resting
himself under a tree, was a holy person--a naked black fakeer, thin and
skinny, and wh