Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/14

 mostly,—he has a candid sort of way of owning up with a smile on his round, plump face that always beats me. He nearly left me once to join them Theosophists, but I told him he couldn't keep it up long enough to make it pay, for he has a curious sort of fair-mindedness, a fancy that all creeds are pretty much alike in essentials; and though he is quick to pick up a new notion, he never shows the faintest sign of prejudice or preference with regard to the many he has taken up with from time to time. I suspect a good many of your educated natives are like him in this respect.

But I was telling you how the booth is arranged. It is a huge, oblong enclosure, roofed along the sides and centre. At the sides are our tableaux; and, what are nearly as attractive, my pictures and looking-glasses. Two of these are full-sized pier-glasses, and they cost me a pretty penny to carry about. A large proportion of my visitors have never seen themselves; and I don't know whether the men or women take more kindly to the mirrors. There's a sort of native "buck" that's vainer than any peacock; and it's as good as a play to watch one of these dandies before a big glass. Up and down the centre runs the railway I mentioned, with a station at each end. Alongside this are some mechanical clocks; a Swiss piping bullfinch that's moved by clockwork, and whistles beautifully; two big live cobras in cages fitted like miniature temples, and a mechanical sepoy that presents arms and rolls his eyes. Then I had a model of the Kaabah at Mecca, that caused me more surprise than anything else; for the little domes all round the square were gilded; a good deal of the building was in ivory, painted over with patterns; and the Kaabah itself was covered with black silk velvet, with gold edging, which is right enough. Yet Mussalmans that had made the Haj and had seen the dust, dirt and bare stone of the real thing used to look through the green curtains with tears in their eyes, and vow my bedizened model was teek and true in every detail.

At the further end are props for rope-dancing and poles for tumbling, for which I have a family of Punjab bazugars I picked up at Tarkesar. The old man of this lot is one of the best hands at "patter" I ever heard. If you were to translate him literally, his talk might be considered coarse, but the boniment of many a French showman is worse; and there's