Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/275

Rh a legion of beggars have taken the Vazir at his word, lounging on the steps and in sunny corners all day, and sleeping at night in the quiet court overlooked by two minarets. Professional menders sit patching rags as though waiting for kodaks to come that way, and a balcony off the cloister overlooks the busy street, exactly as an opera-box commands less spectacular effects.

There was a sound like the chirp of many birds, and a school-teacher led three hundred small boys into the court. Each youngster put his books, coat, shoes, and turban-cloth in a heap, and knelt by the tank to bathe hands and feet before prayer. The teacher patrolled the lines with a stick, trouncing a laggard here and thrashing a boy there into the line and order of piety. When the unruly and restless flock were purified, a leader among them gave a call, and all filed in under the arches and prostrated themselves on the inlaid floor, facing westward to Mecca. One small turban explained to us that they came there every day to "pray to God," and the pious scamp showed me on the last leaf of his school-book: "In the name of God, the Most Merciful, this is my book. The property of Hassan Khan. Do not steal."

When we had seen the three gilded bubble domes of the Golden Mosque reflected in the tank of its white court, and the Hindus going through their purification rites at the temple by the bo-tree, the bearer was for carrying us back through the Delhi Gate to the silver-shops and Europe shops and the shops for Kashmir work and Bokhara silks, to