Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/109

Rh and four boarding-houses. Not a room nor a tent could be had, and we were deciding whether to lay ourselves on an orphan asylum's door-step, seek the consul as really distressed Americans, or go back to the ship and insist upon their keeping us until morning, when the peon of one of the hotels screamed and ran after us as we drove past. We hurried in and sat on the upper backstairs until we could make an instantaneous exchange of luggage with an officer called back to his hill station. The small back room had such shabby furnishings as would cause an American cook to give notice, and we commanded a view of tin roofs, chimney-pots, and clothes-lines. A half-clad, hairy man came in with a bloated goatskin of water over his shoulder. He pulled the goatskin neck around and filled the bath-tub from the leather reservoir—this primitive method surviving in the "city of palaces" after a century of British rule and long official example of luxury and splendor.

In the dining-room each guest had his own servant standing behind his chair. One hundred guests sat at meat, and more than that many turbaned bearers stepped silently over the marble floor. Each retainer looked grim determination, and had a row of knives, forks, and spoons thrust dagger-wise in his belt. Then we discovered that the table d'hôte was the battle-ground of the bearers, that food and forks were for the forehanded, for the swiftest and strongest only. Our Tamil was quivering for the fray and soon in the midst of it, wresting soup and fish, entrée, roast, and game, trophy by trophy, and emerging from each hand-to-hand struggle with