The station, when we reached it yesterday, was crammed with natives squatting so thick on the platform one could hardly move without treading on them.  A great festival is going on which only happens once in a long time—­fifty years I think—­and if they bathe in the holy Ganges while the festival lasts all their sins are washed away.  They are flocking from all parts, eagerly boarding every train that stops, regardless of the direction it is going in.  The festival ends to-day at twelve, so I greatly fear many will be disappointed.  At all times the native loves railway travelling, and, as he has no notion of time-tables, he often arrives at the station the night before, sleeps peacefully on the ground, and is in comfortable time for the first train in the morning.  Also, he has no idea of fixed charges, and when he goes to the ticket-office and asks for his “tickut,” and the babu in charge tells him the price, he offers half.  When that is refused he goes away, and returns in an hour or so and offers a little more.  It may take a whole day to convince a native that he can’t beat down the Railway Company.

This festival had so disarranged the trains that our train which should have left at ten didn’t come in till twelve.  Then we had to change at the next station and wait for the connection, and we actually sat there till eight in the evening, when our train sauntered in.  They say of a certain cold and draughty station in Scotland that in it there is neither man’s meat, nor dog’s meat, nor a place to sit down, and it is equally true of the Indian junction.  We had nothing to eat all day except ginger snaps, and they pall after a time, especially in a dry and dusty land where no water is.  There were two other travellers in the same plight, a Mr. and Mrs. Blackie, and we sat together through that long hot day, too utterly hungry and bored even to pretend interest in each other.  When the train did come in, something had gone wrong with the engine, and they lost more time pottering about with it—­tying it up with string probably.  It was then that my temper, and I do think I behaved with great fortitude up to that time, gave way, and I tried to bully the officials.  It was no use.  They merely smiled and said, “Cer-tain-lee,” and Boggley irritated me more and more by solemnly repeating: 

  “It is not good for the Christian soul to hustle the Aryan brown,
  For the Christian riles and the heathen smiles
  And it weareth the Christian down. 
  And the end of the fight is a tombstone white
  With the name of the dear deceased;
  And the epitaph drear—­’A fool lies here
  Who tried to hustle the East.’”