You have a long drive through the outskirts of Benares before you get to the hotel.  And all the aspects are melancholy.  It is a vision of dusty sterility, decaying temples, crumbling tombs, broken mud walls, shabby huts.  The whole region seems to ache with age and penury.  It must take ten thousand years of want to produce such an aspect.  We were still outside of the great native city when we reached the hotel.  It was a quiet and homelike house, inviting, and manifestly comfortable.  But we liked its annex better, and went thither.  It was a mile away, perhaps, and stood in the midst of a large compound, and was built bungalow fashion, everything on the ground floor, and a veranda all around.  They have doors in India, but I don’t know why.  They don’t fasten, and they stand open, as a rule, with a curtain hanging in the doorspace to keep out the glare of the sun.  Still, there is plenty of privacy, for no white person will come in without notice, of course.  The native men servants will, but they don’t seem to count.  They glide in, barefoot and noiseless, and are in the midst before one knows it.  At first this is a shock, and sometimes it is an embarrassment; but one has to get used to it, and does.

There was one tree in the compound, and a monkey lived in it.  At first I was strongly interested in the tree, for I was told that it was the renowned peepul—­the tree in whose shadow you cannot tell a lie.  This one failed to stand the test, and I went away from it disappointed.  There was a softly creaking well close by, and a couple of oxen drew water from it by the hour, superintended by two natives dressed in the usual “turban and pocket-handkerchief.”  The tree and the well were the only scenery, and so the compound was a soothing and lonesome and satisfying place; and very restful after so many activities.  There was nobody in our bungalow but ourselves; the other guests were in the next one, where the table d’hote was furnished.  A body could not be more pleasantly situated.  Each room had the customary bath attached—­a room ten or twelve feet square, with a roomy stone-paved pit in it and abundance of water.  One could not easily improve upon this arrangement, except by furnishing it with cold water and excluding the hot, in deference to the fervency of the climate; but that is forbidden.  It would damage the bather’s health.  The stranger is warned against taking cold baths in India, but even the most intelligent strangers are fools, and they do not obey, and so they presently get laid up.  I was the most intelligent fool that passed through, that year.  But I am still more intelligent now.  Now that it is too late.