soapstone
deity that looks as if he has been rudely chipped into shape by some
unskilful prentice hand. God-making is a highly respectable and lucrative
profession in India, but only those able to afford it can expect the
luxury of a nice painted and varnished deity right to their hand every
day. People cannot expect a first-class deity for a couple of rupees;
although the best of everything is generally understood to be the
cheapest in the end, it takes money to buy marble, red paint, and
gold-leaf. A bowl of pulse porridge, sweet and gluey, is prepared and
served up in a big banyan-leaf at noon by a villager. In the same village
is one of those very old and shrivelled men peculiar to India. From
appearances, he must be nearly a hundred years old; his skin resembles
the epidermis of a mummy, and hangs in wrinkles about his attenuated
frame. He spends most of his time smoking goodakoo from a neat little
cocoa-nut hookah.

The evening hour brings me into Cawnpore, down a fine broad street
divided in the centre by a canal, with flights of stone steps for banks
and a double row of trees--a street far broader and finer than the Chandni
Chouk--and into an hotel kept by a Parsee gentleman named Byramjee. Life
at this hostelry is made of more than passing interest by the familiar
manner in which frogs, lizards, and birds invade the privacy of one's
apartments. Not one of these is harmful, but one naturally grows curious
about whether a cobra or some other less desirable member of the reptile
world is not likely at any time to join their interesting company. The
lizards scale the walls and ceiling in search of flies, frogs hop
sociably about the floor, and a sparrow now and then twitters in and out.

A two weeks' drought has filled the farmers of the Cawnpore district with
grave apprehensions concerning their crops; but enough rain falls
to-night to gladden all their hearts, and also to leak badly through the
roof of my bedroom.

My punkah-wallah here is a regular automaton--he has acquired the valuable
accomplishment of pulling the punkah-string back and forth in his sleep;
he keeps it up some time after I have quitted the room in the morning,
until a comrade comes round and wakes him up.

For three days the rains continue almost without interruption, raining as
much as seven inches in one night. Slight breaks occur in the downpour,
during which it is possible to get about and take a look at the Memorial
Gardens and the n