Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/11

 "Well, I'm a Director of Public Diversion," said I; whereupon this gentleman laughed pleasantly, and spent a full hour looking about him; recognizing the subjects of all my tableaux, which not one European in twenty ever does; and as he went away he said he wished he could think his work went as straight home to the people as mine did; and he did not grudge stating that, taking it all round, my Show was the most interesting and novel he had ever seen in India.

You only saw the flags flying in the distance, and the car parade in the city before we struck tents and packed up, I think, Sir. It is a pity you did not give us a call, 'specially as you admired the car.

I have seen the best that American circuses can do in the way of triumphal chariots; but for real completeness and finish, that car with Rama and Sita sitting under the canopy, old Jesrut in front and Hanuman at the side, is the most perfect thing I know of. Nowadays, all the native things of that kind are tawdry without being fine; and the details are always spoiled by some incongruous or shabby feature. Mine was studied from old drawings; and all the velvet, kinkob, and goldspangled gauze is of the best quality. The four bullock-housings alone are worth twenty pounds apiece; but then the large embroidered cloths were given to me by a big Delhi banker, who had all his folks down at Buddh Gaya for sraddha—at least, they were given in his name; but Ram Narrayen says it was the gentleman's womenfolk that insisted on it. He hired the Show for a day for his family—some seventy souls,—and I never saw folks in more glee and contentment.

What was my idea in starting a Show at all? Well, Sir, one of my ideas was this: Wherever there is a big crowd of people, there's a certain amount of money per individual to be spent on amusement. In this country the amount is less than elsewhere; but then the number of individuals is larger. At a big religious mela there are thousands of people who have been saving their pice for months, and are quite ready to spend it. Year by year the Brahmin gets less of this hard-earned cash, and that's a thing I cannot quite explain; but you may take it from me as a fact. Beggars, fakirs, jogis and the like get something, and hundreds of rupees are spent on native toys and cheap country ornaments; besides hundreds more on small