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At Hurdwar, in the great fair, among jugglers and tumblers, horse-tamers and snake-charmers, fakirs and pilgrims, I saw a small boy possessed of a devil,—­an authentic devil, as of yore, meet for miraculous driving-out.  In the midst of dire din, heathenish and horrible,—­dissonant jangle of zogees’ bells, brain-rending blasts from Brahmins’ shells, strepent howling of opium-drunk devotees, delirious pounding of tom-toms, brazen clangor of gongs,—­a child of seven years, that might, unpossessed, have been beautiful, sat under the shed of a sort of curiosity-shop, among bangles and armlets, mouthpieces for pipes, leaden idols, and Brahminical cords, and made infernal faces,—­his mouth foaming epileptically, his hair dishevelled and matted with sudden sweat, his eyes blood-shot, his whole aspect diabolic.  And on the ground before the miserable lad were set dishes of rice mixed with blood, carcasses of rams and cocks, handfuls of red flowers, and ragged locks of human hair, wherewith the more miserable people sought to appease the fell bhuta that had set up his throne in that fair soul. Sack bat? It was even so.  And as the possessed made spasmy fists with his feet, clinching his toes strangely, and grinned, with his chin between his knees, I solemnly wished for the presence of One who might cry with the voice of authority, as erst in the land of the Gadarenes, “Come out of the lad, thou unclean spirit!”

At the Hurdwar fair pretty little naked girls are exposed for sale, and in their soft brown innocence appeal at once to the purity of your mind and the tenderness of your heart.  They come from Cashmere with the shawls, or from Cabool with the kittens, or from the Punjaub with the arms and shields.

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Very quaint are the little Miriams, Ruths, and Hannahs of the Jewish houses in Bombay,—­with their full trousers of blue satin and gold, their boyish Fez caps of spangled red velvet, bound round with party-colored turbans, their chin-bands of pearls, their coin chains, their great gold bangles, and the jingling tassels of their long plaits.

Less interesting, because formal and inanimate, even to sulkiness, are the prim little Parsee maidens, who often wear an “exercised” expression, of a settled sort, as though they were weary of reflecting on the hollowness of the world, and how their dolls are stuffed with sawdust, and that Dakhma, the Tower of Silence, is the end of all things.

Then there are the regimental babalogue, the soldiers’ children, sturdiest and toughest of Anglo-Indian urchins,—­affording, in their brown cheeks and crisp muscles and boisterous ways, a consoling contrast to the oh-call-it-pale-not-fairness, and the frailness, and premature pensiveness of the little Civil Service.

And there is the half-caste child, the lisping chee-chee, or Eurasian, grandiloquently so called, much given to sentimental minstrelsy, juvenile polkas, early coquetry, and early beer, hot curries, loud clothes, bad English, and fast pertness.  I never think of them without recalling a precocious ballad-screamer of eight years who was flourished indispensably at every chee-chee hop in Chandernagore: