Page:Wanderings in India, and Other Sketches of Life in Hindostan.djvu/384

870 stored. The expenses are borne by a subscription, and the amount for each ticket depends entirely on the number of subscribers. In some large stations, an ice-ticket for the hot season costs only three pounds. In smaller stations it will cost six pounds. The amount of ice received by each ticket-holder is about four pounds, and is brought away each morning at daylight, in a canvas bag, enveloped in a thick blanket, by the ticket-holder's own servant It is then deposited in a basket made expressly for the purpose. In this basket is placed the wine, beer, water, butter, and fruit. The bag of solid ice is in the centre of all these, and imparts to each an equal coldness. These four pounds of ice, if properly managed, and the air kept out of the basket, will cool an inconceivable quantity of fluids, and will last for twenty-four hours—that is to say, there will be some ice remaining when the fresh bag is brought in. If a bewildered khansaroah, or khitmutghur, in his haste to bring a bottle, leaves the basket uncovered, the inevitable consequence is, that the ice melts, and there is an end of it for the day. I have scarcely known a family in which corporal punishment was not inflicted on the servant guilty of such a piece of neglect. But, great as was the privation, it was always cheerfully endured by the society, when the doctors of the various departments indented on them for their shares of ice respectively. And this occasionally happened, when the hospitals were crowded