Every little village or hamlet one passes through, south of Agra, seems laudably determined to own a god of some sort; those whose finances fail to justify them in sporting a nice, red-painted god with gilt trimmings, sometimes console themselves with a humble little two-dollar soapstone deity that looks as if he has been rudely chipped into shape by some unskilful prentice hand.  God-making is a highly respectable and lucrative profession in India, but only those able to afford it can expect the luxury of a nice painted and varnished deity right to their hand every day.  People cannot expect a first-class deity for a couple of rupees; although the best of everything is generally understood to be the cheapest in the end, it takes money to buy marble, red paint, and gold-leaf.  A bowl of pulse porridge, sweet and gluey, is prepared and served up in a big banyan-leaf at noon by a villager.  In the same village is one of those very old and shrivelled men peculiar to India.  From appearances, he must be nearly a hundred years old; his skin resembles the epidermis of a mummy, and hangs in wrinkles about his attenuated frame.  He spends most of his time smoking goodakoo from a neat little cocoa-nut hookah.

The evening hour brings me into Cawnpore, down a fine broad street divided in the centre by a canal, with flights of stone steps for banks and a double row of trees—­a street far broader and finer than the Chandni Chouk—­and into an hotel kept by a Parsee gentleman named Byramjee.  Life at this hostelry is made of more than passing interest by the familiar manner in which frogs, lizards, and birds invade the privacy of one’s apartments.  Not one of these is harmful, but one naturally grows curious about whether a cobra or some other less desirable member of the reptile world is not likely at any time to join their interesting company.  The lizards scale the walls and ceiling in search of flies, frogs hop sociably about the floor, and a sparrow now and then twitters in and out.

A two weeks’ drought has filled the farmers of the Cawnpore district with grave apprehensions concerning their crops; but enough rain falls to-night to gladden all their hearts, and also to leak badly through the roof of my bedroom.

My punkah-wallah here is a regular automaton—­he has acquired the valuable accomplishment of pulling the punkah-string back and forth in his sleep; he keeps it up some time after I have quitted the room in the morning, until a comrade comes round and wakes him up.

For three days the rains continue almost without interruption, raining as much as seven inches in one night.  Slight breaks occur in the downpour, during which it is possible to get about and take a look at the Memorial Gardens and the native town.  The Memorial Gardens and the well enclosed therein commemorate one of the most pathetic incidents of the mutiny—­the brutal massacre by Nana Sahib of about two hundred English women and children.  This arch-fiend held