“Sometimes another form of confidence trick is adopted, which is

invariably successful. The particular pigeon is spotted, and, his

acquaintance having been made, he is encouraged in every form of

vice. When the friendship is thoroughly established, the swindler

remarks to the young man that he has a brother who has asked him to

lend him Rs.10,000. The swindler says he has the money and would

lend it; but, as the borrower is his brother, he cannot charge

interest. So he proposes that he should hand the dupe the money,

and the latter should lend it to the swindler's brother, exacting a

heavy pre-payment of interest which, it is pointed out, they may

equally enjoy in dissipation. The dupe sees no objection, and on

the appointed day receives Rs.7,000 from the swindler, which he

hands over to the confederate. The latter is profuse in his thanks,

and executes a promissory note for Rs.10,000, payable to bearer.

The swindler allows the scheme to remain quiescent for a time, and

then suggests that, as the money has not been repaid and as it would

be unpleasant to sue his brother, it would be better to sell the

note in the bazaar. The dupe hands the note over, for the money he

advanced was not his, and, on being informed that it would be

necessary to have his signature on the back so as to render the

security negotiable, he signs without any hesitation. The swindler

passes it on to confederates, and the latter employ a respectable

firm of solicitors to ask the dupe if his signature is genuine. He

admits it at once, and his fate is sealed. A suit is filed by a

confederate against the dupe, two accomplices being made

co-defendants. They admit their Signatures as indorsers, and the

one swears he bought the note for value from the dupe. The latter

has no defense, for no court would believe the apparently idle

explanation of the manner in which he came to endorse the note.”

There is only one India! It is the only country that has a monopoly of

grand and imposing specialties. When another country has a remarkable

thing, it cannot have it all to itself—some other country has a

duplicate. But India—that is different. Its marvels are its own; the

patents cannot be infringed; imitations are not possible. And think of

the size of them, the majesty of them, the weird and outlandish character

of the most of them!

There is the Plague, the Black Death: India invented it; India is the

cradle of that mighty birth.

The Car of Juggernaut was India's invention.

So was the Suttee; and within the time of men still living eight hundred

widows willingly, and, in fact, rejoicingly, burned themselves to death

on the bodies of their dead husbands in a single year. Eight hundred

would do it this year if the British government would let them.

Famine is India's specialty. Elsewhere famines are inconsequential

incidents—in India they are devastating cataclysms; in one case they

annihilate hundreds; in the other, millions.

India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion all other

countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

With her everything is on a giant scale—even her poverty; no other

country can show anything to compare with it. And she has been used to

wealth on so vast a scale that she has to shorten to single words the

expressions describing great sums. She describes 100,000 with one word

—a 'lahk'; she describes ten millions with one word—a 'crore'.

In the bowels of the granite mountains she has patiently carved out

dozens of vast temples, and made them glorious with sculptured colonnades

and stately groups of statuary, and has adorned the eternal walls with

noble paintings. She has built fortresses of such magnitude that the

show-strongholds of the rest of the world are but modest little things by

comparison; palaces that are wonders for rarity of materials, delicacy

and beauty of workmanship, and for cost; and one tomb which men go around

the globe to see. It takes eighty nations, speaking eighty languages, to

people her, and they number three hundred millions.

On top of all this she is the mother and home of that wonder of wonders—

caste—and of that mystery of mysteries, the satanic brotherhood of the

Thugs.

India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of things. She

had the first civilization; she had the first accumulation of material

wealth; she was populous with deep thinkers and subtle intellects; she

had mines, and woods, and a fruitful soil. It would seem as if she

should have kept the lead, and should be to-day not the meek dependent of

an alien master, but mistress of the world, and delivering law and

command to every tribe and nation in it. But, in truth, there was never

any possibility of such supremacy for her. If there had been but one

India and one language—but there were eighty of them! Where there are

eighty nations and several hundred governments, fighting and quarreling

must be the common business of life; unity of purpose and policy are

impossible; out of such elements supremacy in the world cannot come.

Even caste itself could have had the defeating effect of a multiplicity

of tongues, no doubt; for it separates a people into layers, and layers,

and still other layers, that have no community of feeling with each

other; and in such a condition of things as that, patriotism can have no

healthy growth.

It was the division of the country into so many States and nations that

made Thuggee possible and prosperous. It is difficult to realize the

situation. But perhaps one may approximate it by imagining the States of

our Union peopled by separate nations, speaking separate languages, with

guards and custom-houses strung along all frontiers, plenty of

interruptions for travelers and traders, interpreters able to handle all

the languages very rare or non-existent, and a few wars always going on

here and there and yonder as a further embarrassment to commerce and

excursioning. It would make intercommunication in a measure ungeneral.

India had eighty languages, and more custom-houses than cats. No clever

man with the instinct of a highway robber could fail to notice what a

chance for business was here offered. India was full of clever men with

the highwayman instinct, and so, quite naturally, the brotherhood of the

Thugs came into being to meet the long-felt want.

How long ago that was nobody knows—centuries, it is supposed. One of

the

chiefest wonders connected with it was the success with which it kept its

secret. The English trader did business in India two hundred years and

more before he ever heard of it; and yet it was assassinating its

thousands all around him every year, the whole time.

CHAPTER XLIV.

The old saw says, “Let a sleeping dog lie.” Right.... Still, when there

is much at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

FROM DIARY:

January 28. I learned of an official Thug-book the other day. I was

not aware before that there was such a thing. I am allowed the temporary

use of it. We are making preparations for travel. Mainly the

preparations are purchases of bedding. This is to be used in sleeping

berths in the trains; in private houses sometimes; and in nine-tenths of

the hotels. It is not realizable; and yet it is true. It is a survival;

an apparently unnecessary thing which in some strange way has outlived

the conditions which once made it necessary. It comes down from a time

when the railway and the hotel did not exist; when the occasional white

traveler went horseback or by bullock-cart, and stopped over night in the

small dak-bungalow provided at easy distances by the government—a

shelter, merely, and nothing more. He had to carry bedding along, or do

without. The dwellings of the English residents are spacious and

comfortable and commodiously furnished, and surely it must be an odd

sight to see half a dozen guests come filing into such a place and

dumping blankets and pillows here and there and everywhere. But custom

makes incongruous things congruous.

One buys the bedding, with waterproof hold-all for it at almost any shop

—there is no difficulty about it.

January 30. What a spectacle the railway station was, at train-time! It

was a very large station, yet when we arrived it seemed as if the whole

world was present—half of it inside, the other half outside, and both

halves, bearing mountainous head-loads of bedding and other freight,

trying simultaneously to pass each other, in opposing floods, in one

narrow door. These opposing floods were patient, gentle, long-suffering

natives, with whites scattered among them at rare intervals; and wherever

a white man's native servant appeared, that native seemed to have put

aside his natural gentleness for the time and invested himself with the

white man's privilege of making a way for himself by promptly shoving all

intervening black things out of it. In these exhibitions of authority

Satan was scandalous. He was probably a Thug in one of his former

incarnations.

Inside the great station, tides upon tides of rainbow-costumed natives

swept along, this way and that, in massed and bewildering confusion,

eager, anxious, belated, distressed; and washed up to the long trains and

flowed into them with their packs and bundles, and disappeared, followed

at once by the next wash, the next wave. And here and there, in the

midst of this hurly-burly, and seemingly undisturbed by it, sat great

groups of natives on the bare stone floor,—young, slender brown women,

old, gray wrinkled women, little soft brown babies, old men, young men,

boys; all poor people, but all the females among them, both big and

little, bejeweled with cheap and showy nose-rings, toe-rings, leglets,

and armlets, these things constituting all their wealth, no doubt. These

silent crowds sat there with their humble bundles and baskets and small

household gear about them, and patiently waited—for what? A train that

was to start at some time or other during the day or night! They hadn't

timed themselves well, but that was no matter—the thing had been so

ordered from on high, therefore why worry? There was plenty of time,

hours and hours of it, and the thing that was to happen would happen

—there was no hurrying it.

The natives traveled third class, and at marvelously cheap rates. They

were packed and crammed into cars that held each about fifty; and it was

said that often a Brahmin of the highest caste was thus brought into

personal touch, and consequent defilement, with persons of the lowest

castes—no doubt a very shocking thing if a body could understand it and

properly appreciate it. Yes, a Brahmin who didn't own a rupee and

couldn't borrow one, might have to touch elbows with a rich hereditary

lord of inferior caste, inheritor of an ancient title a couple of yards

long, and he would just have to stand it; for if either of the two was

allowed to go in the cars where the sacred white people were, it probably

wouldn't be the august poor Brahmin. There was an immense string of

those third-class cars, for the natives travel by hordes; and a weary

hard night of it the occupants would have, no doubt.

When we reached our car, Satan and Barney had already arrived there with

their train of porters carrying bedding and parasols and cigar boxes, and

were at work. We named him Barney for short; we couldn't use his real

name, there wasn't time.

It was a car that promised comfort; indeed, luxury. Yet the cost of it

—well, economy could no further go; even in France; not even in Italy.

It

was built of the plainest and cheapest partially-smoothed boards, with a

coating of dull paint on them, and there was nowhere a thought of

decoration. The floor was bare, but would not long remain so when the

dust should begin to fly. Across one end of the compartment ran a

netting for the accommodation of hand-baggage; at the other end was a

door which would shut, upon compulsion, but wouldn't stay shut; it opened

into a narrow little closet which had a wash-bowl in one end of it, and a

place to put a towel, in case you had one with you—and you would be sure

to have towels, because you buy them with the bedding, knowing that the

railway doesn't furnish them. On each side of the car, and running fore

and aft, was a broad leather-covered sofa to sit on in the day and sleep

on at night. Over each sofa hung, by straps, a wide, flat,

leather-covered shelf—to sleep on. In the daytime you can hitch it up

against the wall, out of the way—and then you have a big unencumbered

and most comfortable room to spread out in. No car in any country is

quite its equal for comfort (and privacy) I think. For usually there are

but two persons in it; and even when there are four there is but little

sense of impaired privacy. Our own cars at home can surpass the railway

world in all details but that one: they have no cosiness; there are too

many people together.

At the foot of each sofa was a side-door, for entrance and exit.

Along the whole length of the sofa on each side of the car ran a row of

large single-plate windows, of a blue tint—blue to soften the bitter

glare of the sun and protect one's eyes from torture. These could be let

down out of the way when one wanted the breeze. In the roof were two oil

lamps which gave a light strong enough to read by; each had a green-cloth

attachment by which it could be covered when the light should be no

longer needed.

While we talked outside with friends, Barney and Satan placed the

hand-baggage, books, fruits, and soda-bottles in the racks, and the

hold-alls and heavy baggage in the closet, hung the overcoats and

sun-helmets and towels on the hooks, hoisted the two bed-shelves up out

of the way, then shouldered their bedding and retired to the third class.

Now then, you see what a handsome, spacious, light, airy, homelike place

it was, wherein to walk up and down, or sit and write, or stretch out and

read and smoke. A central door in the forward end of the compartment

opened into a similar compartment. It was occupied by my wife and

daughter. About nine in the evening, while we halted a while at a

station, Barney and Satan came and undid the clumsy big hold-alls, and

spread the bedding on the sofas in both compartments—mattresses, sheets,

gay coverlets, pillows, all complete; there are no chambermaids in India

—apparently it was an office that was never heard of. Then they

closed the communicating door, nimbly tidied up our place, put the

night-clothing on the beds and the slippers under them, then returned

to their own quarters.

January 31. It was novel and pleasant, and I stayed awake as long as I

could, to enjoy it, and to read about those strange people the Thugs. In

my sleep they remained with me, and tried to strangle me. The leader of

the gang was that giant Hindoo who was such a picture in the strong light

when we were leaving those Hindoo betrothal festivities at two o'clock in

the morning—Rao Bahadur Baskirao Balinkanje Pitale, Vakeel to the

Gaikwar of Baroda. It was he that brought me the invitation from his

master to go to Baroda and lecture to that prince—and now he was

misbehaving in my dreams. But all things can happen in dreams. It is

indeed as the Sweet Singer of Michigan says—irrelevantly, of course, for

the one and unfailing great quality which distinguishes her poetry from

Shakespeare's and makes it precious to us is its stern and simple

irrelevancy:

My heart was gay and happy,

This was ever in my mind,

There is better times a coming,

And I hope some day to find

Myself capable of composing,

It was my heart's delight

To compose on a sentimental subject

If it came in my mind just right.

—[“The Sentimental Song Book,” p. 49; theme, “The Author's Early Life,”

19th stanza.]

Barroda. Arrived at 7 this morning. The dawn was just beginning to

show. It was forlorn to have to turn out in a strange place at such a

time, and the blinking lights in the station made it seem night still.

But the gentlemen who had come to receive us were there with their

servants, and they make quick work; there was no lost time. We were soon

outside and moving swiftly through the soft gray light, and presently

were comfortably housed—with more servants to help than we were used to,

and with rather embarassingly important officials to direct them. But it

was custom; they spoke Ballarat English, their bearing was charming and

hospitable, and so all went well.

Breakfast was a satisfaction. Across the lawns was visible in the

distance through the open window an Indian well, with two oxen tramping

leisurely up and down long inclines, drawing water; and out of the

stillness came the suffering screech of the machinery—not quite musical,

and yet soothingly melancholy and dreamy and reposeful—a wail of lost

spirits, one might imagine. And commemorative and reminiscent, perhaps;

for of course the Thugs used to throw people down that well when they

were done with them.

After breakfast the day began, a sufficiently busy one. We were driven

by winding roads through a vast park, with noble forests of great trees,

and with tangles and jungles of lovely growths of a humbler sort; and at

one place three large gray apes came out and pranced across the road—a

good deal of a surprise and an unpleasant one, for such creatures belong

in the menagerie, and they look artificial and out of place in a

wilderness.

We came to the city, by and by, and drove all through it. Intensely

Indian, it was, and crumbly, and mouldering, and immemorially old, to all

appearance. And the houses—oh, indescribably quaint and curious they

were, with their fronts an elaborate lace-work of intricate and beautiful

wood-carving, and now and then further adorned with rude pictures of

elephants and princes and gods done in shouting colors; and all the

ground floors along these cramped and narrow lanes occupied as shops

—shops unbelievably small and impossibly packed with merchantable

rubbish,

and with nine-tenths-naked natives squatting at their work of hammering,

pounding, brazing, soldering, sewing, designing, cooking, measuring out

grain, grinding it, repairing idols—and then the swarm of ragged and

noisy humanity under the horses' feet and everywhere, and the pervading

reek and fume and smell! It was all wonderful and delightful.

Imagine a file of elephants marching through such a crevice of a street

and scraping the paint off both sides of it with their hides. How big

they must look, and how little they must make the houses look; and when

the elephants are in their glittering court costume, what a contrast they

must make with the humble and sordid surroundings. And when a mad

elephant goes raging through, belting right and left with his trunk, how

do these swarms of people get out of the way? I suppose it is a thing

which happens now and then in the mad season (for elephants have a mad

season).

I wonder how old the town is. There are patches of building—massive

structures, monuments, apparently—that are so battered and worn, and

seemingly so tired and so burdened with the weight of age, and so dulled

and stupefied with trying to remember things they forgot before history

began, that they give one the feeling that they must have been a part of

original Creation. This is indeed one of the oldest of the princedoms of

India, and has always been celebrated for its barbaric pomps and

splendors, and for the wealth of its princes.

CHAPTER XLV.

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the

heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

Out of the town again; a long drive through open country, by winding

roads among secluded villages nestling in the inviting shade of tropic

vegetation, a Sabbath stillness everywhere, sometimes a pervading sense

of solitude, but always barefoot natives gliding by like spirits, without

sound of footfall, and others in the distance dissolving away and

vanishing like the creatures of dreams. Now and then a string of stately

camels passed by—always interesting things to look at—and they were

velvet-shod by nature, and made no noise. Indeed, there were no noises

of any sort in this paradise. Yes, once there was one, for a moment: a

file of native convicts passed along in charge of an officer, and we

caught the soft clink of their chains. In a retired spot, resting

himself under a tree, was a holy person—a naked black fakeer, thin and

skinny, and whitey-gray all over with ashes.

By and by to the elephant stables, and I took a ride; but it was by

request—I did not ask for it, and didn't want it; but I took it, because

otherwise they would have thought I was afraid, which I was. The

elephant kneels down, by command—one end of him at a time—and you climb

the ladder and get into the howdah, and then he gets up, one end at a

time, just as a ship gets up over a wave; and after that, as he strides

monstrously about, his motion is much like a ship's motion. The mahout

bores into the back of his head with a great iron prod and you wonder at

his temerity and at the elephant's patience, and you think that perhaps

the patience will not last; but it does, and nothing happens. The mahout

talks to the elephant in a low voice all the time, and the elephant seems

to understand it all and to be pleased with it; and he obeys every order

in the most contented and docile way. Among these twenty-five elephants

were two which were larger than any I had ever seen before, and if I had

thought I could learn to not be afraid, I would have taken one of them

while the police were not looking.

In the howdah-house there were many howdahs that were made of silver, one

of gold, and one of old ivory, and equipped with cushions and canopies of

rich and costly stuffs. The wardrobe of the elephants was there, too;

vast velvet covers stiff and heavy with gold embroidery; and bells of

silver and gold; and ropes of these metals for fastening the things on—

harness, so to speak; and monster hoops of massive gold for the elephant

to wear on his ankles when he is out in procession on business of state.

But we did not see the treasury of crown jewels, and that was a

disappointment, for in mass and richness it ranks only second in India.

By mistake we were taken to see the new palace instead, and we used up

the last remnant of our spare time there. It was a pity, too; for the

new palace is mixed modern American-European, and has not a merit except

costliness. It is wholly foreign to India, and impudent and out of

place. The architect has escaped. This comes of overdoing the

suppression of the Thugs; they had their merits. The old palace is

oriental and charming, and in consonance with the country. The old

palace would still be great if there were nothing of it but the spacious

and lofty hall where the durbars are held. It is not a good place to

lecture in, on account of the echoes, but it is a good place to hold

durbars in and regulate the affairs of a kingdom, and that is what it is

for. If I had it I would have a durbar every day, instead of once or

twice a year.

The prince is an educated gentleman. His culture is European. He has

been in Europe five times. People say that this is costly amusement for

him, since in crossing the sea he must sometimes be obliged to drink

water from vessels that are more or less public, and thus damage his

caste. To get it purified again he must make pilgrimage to some renowned

Hindoo temples and contribute a fortune or two to them. His people are

like the other Hindoos, profoundly religious; and they could not be

content with a master who was impure.

We failed to see the jewels, but we saw the gold cannon and the silver

one—they seemed to be six-pounders. They were not designed for

business, but for salutes upon rare and particularly important state

occasions. An ancestor of the present Gaikwar had the silver one made,

and a subsequent ancestor had the gold one made, in order to outdo him.

This sort of artillery is in keeping with the traditions of Baroda, which

was of old famous for style and show. It used to entertain visiting

rajahs and viceroys with tiger-fights, elephant-fights, illuminations,

and elephant-processions of the most glittering and gorgeous character.

It makes the circus a pale, poor thing.

In the train, during a part of the return journey from Baroda, we had the

company of a gentleman who had with him a remarkable looking dog. I had

not seen one of its kind before, as far as I could remember; though of

course I might have seen one and not noticed it, for I am not acquainted

with dogs, but only with cats. This dog's coat was smooth and shiny and

black, and I think it had tan trimmings around the edges of the dog, and

perhaps underneath. It was a long, low dog, with very short, strange

legs—legs that curved inboard, something like parentheses turned the

wrong way (.

Indeed, it was made on the plan of a bench for length and lowness. It

seemed to be satisfied, but I thought the plan poor, and structurally

weak, on account of the distance between the forward supports and those

abaft. With age the dog's back was likely to sag; and it seemed to me

that it would have been a stronger and more practicable dog if it had had

some more legs. It had not begun to sag yet, but the shape of the legs

showed that the undue weight imposed upon them was beginning to tell.

It had a long nose, and floppy ears that hung down, and a resigned

expression of countenance. I did not like to ask what kind of a dog it

was, or how it came to be deformed, for it was plain that the gentleman

was very fond of it, and naturally he could be sensitive about it. From

delicacy I thought it best not to seem to notice it too much. No doubt a

man with a dog like that feels just as a person does who has a child that

is out of true. The gentleman was not merely fond of the dog, he was

also proud of it—just the same again, as a mother feels about her

child when it is an idiot. I could see that he was proud of it,

not-withstanding it was such a long dog and looked so resigned and pious.

It had been all over the world with him, and had been pilgriming like

that for years and years. It had traveled 50,000 miles by sea and rail,

and had ridden in front of him on his horse 8,000. It had a silver medal

from the Geographical Society of Great Britain for its travels, and I saw

it. It had won prizes in dog shows, both in India and in England—I saw

them. He said its pedigree was on record in the Kennel Club, and that it

was a well-known dog. He said a great many people in London could

recognize it the moment they saw it. I did not say anything, but I did

not think it anything strange; I should know that dog again, myself, yet

I am not careful about noticing dogs. He said that when he walked along

in London, people often stopped and looked at the dog. Of course I did

not say anything, for I did not want to hurt his feelings, but I could

have explained to him that if you take a great long low dog like that and

waddle it along the street anywhere in the world and not charge anything,

people will stop and look. He was gratified because the dog took prizes.

But that was nothing; if I were built like that I could take prizes

myself. I wished I knew what kind of a dog it was, and what it was for,

but I could not very well ask, for that would show that I did not know.

Not that I want a dog like that, but only to know the secret of its

birth.

I think he was going to hunt elephants with it, because I know, from

remarks dropped by him, that he has hunted large game in India and

Africa, and likes it. But I think that if he tries to hunt elephants

with it, he is going to be disappointed.

I do not believe that it is suited for elephants. It lacks energy, it

lacks force of character, it lacks bitterness. These things all show in

the meekness and resignation of its expression. It would not attack an

elephant, I am sure of it. It might not run if it saw one coming, but it

looked to me like a dog that would sit down and pray.

I wish he had told me what breed it was, if there are others; but I shall

know the dog next time, and then if I can bring myself to it I will put

delicacy aside and ask. If I seem strangely interested in dogs, I have a

reason for it; for a dog saved me from an embarrassing position once, and

that has made me grateful to these animals; and if by study I could learn

to tell some of the kinds from the others, I should be greatly pleased.

I only know one kind apart, yet, and that is the kind that saved me that

time. I always know that kind when I meet it, and if it is hungry or

lost I take care of it. The matter happened in this way:

It was years and years ago. I had received a note from Mr. Augustin Daly

of the Fifth Avenue Theatre, asking me to call the next time I should be

in New York. I was writing plays, in those days, and he was admiring

them and trying to get me a chance to get them played in Siberia. I took

the first train—the early one—the one that leaves Hartford at 8.29 in

the morning. At New Haven I bought a paper, and found it filled with

glaring display-lines about a “bench-show” there. I had often heard of

bench-shows, but had never felt any interest in them, because I supposed

they were lectures that were not well attended. It turned out, now, that

it was not that, but a dog-show. There was a double-leaded column about

the king-feature of this one, which was called a Saint Bernard, and was

worth $10,000, and was known to be the largest and finest of his species

in the world. I read all this with interest, because out of my

school-boy readings I dimly remembered how the priests and pilgrims of

St. Bernard used to go out in the storms and dig these dogs out of the

snowdrifts when lost and exhausted, and give them brandy and save their

lives, and drag them to the monastery and restore them with gruel.

Also, there was a picture of this prize-dog in the paper, a noble great

creature with a benignant countenance, standing by a table. He was

placed in that way so that one could get a right idea of his great

dimensions. You could see that he was just a shade higher than the

table—indeed, a huge fellow for a dog. Then there was a description

which went into the details. It gave his enormous weight—150 1/2

pounds, and his length 4 feet 2 inches, from stem to stern-post; and his

height—3 feet 1 inch, to the top of his back. The pictures and the

figures so impressed me, that I could see the beautiful colossus before

me, and I kept on thinking about him for the next two hours; then I

reached New York, and he dropped out of my mind.

In the swirl and tumult of the hotel lobby I ran across Mr. Daly's

comedian, the late James Lewis, of beloved memory, and I casually

mentioned that I was going to call upon Mr. Daly in the evening at 8.

He looked surprised, and said he reckoned not. For answer I handed him

Mr. Daly's note. Its substance was: “Come to my private den, over the

theater, where we cannot be interrupted. And come by the back way, not

the front. No. 642 Sixth Avenue is a cigar shop; pass through it and you

are in a paved court, with high buildings all around; enter the second

door on the left, and come up stairs.”

“Is this all?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, you'll never get in”

“Why?”

“Because you won't. Or if you do you can draw on me for a hundred

dollars; for you will be the first man that has accomplished it in

twenty-five years. I can't think what Mr. Daly can have been absorbed

in. He has forgotten a most important detail, and he will feel

humiliated in the morning when he finds that you tried to get in and

couldn't.”

“Why, what is the trouble?”

“I'll tell you. You see——”

At that point we were swept apart by the crowd, somebody detained me with

a moment's talk, and we did not get together again. But it did not

matter; I believed he was joking, anyway.

At eight in the evening I passed through the cigar shop and into the

court and knocked at the second door.

“Come in!”

I entered. It was a small room, carpetless, dusty, with a naked deal

table, and two cheap wooden chairs for furniture. A giant Irishman was

standing there, with shirt collar and vest unbuttoned, and no coat on. I

put my hat on the table, and was about to say something, when the

Irishman took the innings himself. And not with marked courtesy of tone:

“Well, sor, what will you have?”

I was a little disconcerted, and my easy confidence suffered a shrinkage.

The man stood as motionless as Gibraltar, and kept his unblinking eye

upon me. It was very embarrassing, very humiliating. I stammered at a

false start or two; then——

“I have just run down from——”

“Av ye plaze, ye'll not smoke here, ye understand.”

I laid my cigar on the window-ledge; chased my flighty thoughts a moment,

then said in a placating manner:

“I—I have come to see Mr. Daly.”

“Oh, ye have, have ye?”

“Yes”

“Well, ye'll not see him.”

“But he asked me to come.”

“Oh, he did, did he?”

“Yes, he sent me this note, and——”

“Lemme see it.”

For a moment I fancied there would be a change in the atmosphere, now;

but this idea was premature. The big man was examining the note

searchingly under the gas-jet. A glance showed me that he had it upside

down—disheartening evidence that he could not read.

“Is ut his own handwrite?”

“Yes—he wrote it himself.”

“He did, did he?”

“Yes.”

“H'm. Well, then, why ud he write it like that?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mane, why wudn't he put his naime to ut?”

“His name is to it. That's not it—you are looking at my name.”

I thought that that was a home shot, but he did not betray that he had

been hit. He said:

“It's not an aisy one to spell; how do you pronounce ut?”

“Mark Twain.”

“H'm. H'm. Mike Train. H'm. I don't remember ut. What is it ye want

to see him about?”

“It isn't I that want to see him, he wants to see me.”

“Oh, he does, does he?”

“Yes.”

“What does he want to see ye about?”

“I don't know.”

“Ye don't know! And ye confess it, becod! Well, I can tell ye wan

thing—ye'll not see him. Are ye in the business?”

“What business?”

“The show business.”

A fatal question. I recognized that I was defeated. If I answered no,

he would cut the matter short and wave me to the door without the grace

of a word—I saw it in his uncompromising eye; if I said I was a

lecturer, he would despise me, and dismiss me with opprobrious words; if

I said I was a dramatist, he would throw me out of the window. I saw

that my case was hopeless, so I chose the course which seemed least

humiliating: I would pocket my shame and glide out without answering.

The silence was growing lengthy.

“I'll ask ye again. Are ye in the show business yerself?”

“Yes!”

I said it with splendid confidence; for in that moment the very twin of

that grand New Haven dog loafed into the room, and I saw that Irishman's

eye light eloquently with pride and affection.

“Ye are? And what is it?”

“I've got a bench-show in New Haven.”

The weather did change then.

“You don't say, sir! And that's your show, sir! Oh, it's a grand show,

it's a wonderful show, sir, and a proud man I am to see your honor this

day. And ye'll be an expert, sir, and ye'll know all about dogs—more

than ever they know theirselves, I'll take me oath to ut.”

I said, with modesty:

“I believe I have some reputation that way. In fact, my business

requires it.”

“Ye have some reputation, your honor! Bedad I believe you! There's not

a jintleman in the worrld that can lay over ye in the judgmint of a dog,

sir. Now I'll vinture that your honor'll know that dog's dimensions

there better than he knows them his own self, and just by the casting of

your educated eye upon him. Would you mind giving a guess, if ye'll be

so good?”

I knew that upon my answer would depend my fate. If I made this dog

bigger than the prize-dog, it would be bad diplomacy, and suspicious; if

I fell too far short of the prizedog, that would be equally damaging.

The dog was standing by the table, and I believed I knew the difference

between him and the one whose picture I had seen in the newspaper to a

shade. I spoke promptly up and said:

“It's no trouble to guess this noble creature's figures: height, three

feet; length, four feet and three-quarters of an inch; weight, a hundred

and forty-eight and a quarter.”

The man snatched his hat from its peg and danced on it with joy,

shouting:

“Ye've hardly missed it the hair's breadth, hardly the shade of a shade,

your honor! Oh, it's the miraculous eye ye've got, for the judgmint of a

dog!”

And still pouring out his admiration of my capacities, he snatched off

his vest and scoured off one of the wooden chairs with it, and scrubbed

it and polished it, and said:

“There, sit down, your honor, I'm ashamed of meself that I forgot ye were

standing all this time; and do put on your hat, ye mustn't take cold,

it's a drafty place; and here is your cigar, sir, a getting cold, I'll

give ye a light. There. The place is all yours, sir, and if ye'll just

put your feet on the table and make yourself at home, I'll stir around

and get a candle and light ye up the ould crazy stairs and see that ye

don't come to anny harm, for be this time Mr. Daly'll be that impatient

to see your honor that he'll be taking the roof off.”

He conducted me cautiously and tenderly up the stairs, lighting the way

and protecting me with friendly warnings, then pushed the door open and

bowed me in and went his way, mumbling hearty things about my wonderful

eye for points of a dog. Mr. Daly was writing and had his back to me.

He glanced over his shoulder presently, then jumped up and said—

“Oh, dear me, I forgot all about giving instructions. I was just writing

you to beg a thousand pardons. But how is it you are here? How did you

get by that Irishman? You are the first man that's done it in five and

twenty years. You didn't bribe him, I know that; there's not money

enough in New York to do it. And you didn't persuade him; he is all ice

and iron: there isn't a soft place nor a warm one in him anywhere. What

is your secret? Look here; you owe me a hundred dollars for

unintentionally giving you a chance to perform a miracle—for it is a

miracle that you've done.”

“That is all right,” I said, “collect it of Jimmy Lewis.”

That good dog not only did me that good turn in the time of my need, but

he won for me the envious reputation among all the theatrical people from

the Atlantic to the Pacific of being the only man in history who had ever

run the blockade of Augustin Daly's back door.

CHAPTER XLVI.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together,

who would escape hanging.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

On the Train. Fifty years ago, when I was a boy in the then remote and

sparsely peopled Mississippi valley, vague tales and rumors of a

mysterious body of professional murderers came wandering in from a

country which was constructively as far from us as the constellations

blinking in space—India; vague tales and rumors of a sect called Thugs,

who waylaid travelers in lonely places and killed them for the

contentment of a god whom they worshiped; tales which everybody liked to

listen to and nobody believed, except with reservations. It was

considered that the stories had gathered bulk on their travels. The

matter died down and a lull followed. Then Eugene Sue's “Wandering Jew”

appeared, and made great talk for a while. One character in it was a

chief of Thugs—“Feringhea”—a mysterious and terrible Indian who was as

slippery and sly as a serpent, and as deadly; and he stirred up the Thug

interest once more. But it did not last. It presently died again this

time to stay dead.

At first glance it seems strange that this should have happened; but

really it was not strange—on the contrary—it was natural; I mean on

our side of the water. For the source whence the Thug tales mainly came

was a Government Report, and without doubt was not republished in

America; it was probably never even seen there. Government Reports have

no general circulation. They are distributed to the few, and are not

always read by those few. I heard of this Report for the first time a

day or two ago, and borrowed it. It is full of fascinations; and it

turns those dim, dark fairy tales of my boyhood days into realities.

The Report was made in 1839 by Major Sleeman, of the Indian Service, and

was printed in Calcutta in 1840. It is a clumsy, great, fat, poor sample

of the printer's art, but good enough for a government printing-office in

that old day and in that remote region, perhaps. To Major Sleeman was

given the general superintendence of the giant task of ridding India of

Thuggee, and he and his seventeen assistants accomplished it. It was the

Augean Stables over again. Captain Vallancey, writing in a Madras

journal in those old times, makes this remark:

“The day that sees this far-spread evil eradicated from India and

known only in name, will greatly tend to immortalize British rule in

the East.”

He did not overestimate the magnitude and difficulty of the work, nor the

immensity of the credit which would justly be due to British rule in case

it was accomplished.

Thuggee became known to the British authorities in India about 1810, but

its wide prevalence was not suspected; it was not regarded as a serious

matter, and no systematic measures were taken for its suppression until

about 1830. About that time Major Sleeman captured Eugene Sue's

Thug-chief, “Feringhea,” and got him to turn King's evidence. The

revelations were so stupefying that Sleeman was not able to believe them.

Sleeman thought he knew every criminal within his jurisdiction, and that

the worst of them were merely thieves; but Feringhea told him that he was

in reality living in the midst of a swarm of professional murderers; that

they had been all about him for many years, and that they buried their

dead close by. These seemed insane tales; but Feringhea said come and

see—and he took him to a grave and dug up a hundred bodies, and told him

all the circumstances of the killings, and named the Thugs who had done

the work. It was a staggering business. Sleeman captured some of these

Thugs and proceeded to examine them separately, and with proper

precautions against collusion; for he would not believe any Indian's

unsupported word. The evidence gathered proved the truth of what

Feringhea had said, and also revealed the fact that gangs of Thugs were

plying their trade all over India. The astonished government now took

hold of Thuggee, and for ten years made systematic and relentless war

upon it, and finally destroyed it. Gang after gang was captured, tried,

and punished. The Thugs were harried and hunted from one end of India to

the other. The government got all their secrets out of them; and also

got the names of the members of the bands, and recorded them in a book,

together with their birthplaces and places of residence.

The Thugs were worshipers of Bhowanee; and to this god they sacrificed

anybody that came handy; but they kept the dead man's things themselves,

for the god cared for nothing but the corpse. Men were initiated into

the sect with solemn ceremonies. Then they were taught how to strangle a

person with the sacred choke-cloth, but were not allowed to perform

officially with it until after long practice. No half-educated strangler

could choke a man to death quickly enough to keep him from uttering a

sound—a muffled scream, gurgle, gasp, moan, or something of the sort;

but the expert's work was instantaneous: the cloth was whipped around the

victim's neck, there was a sudden twist, and the head fell silently

forward, the eyes starting from the sockets; and all was over. The Thug

carefully guarded against resistance. It was usual to to get the victims

to sit down, for that was the handiest position for business.

If the Thug had planned India itself it could not have been more

conveniently arranged for the needs of his occupation.

There were no public conveyances. There were no conveyances for hire.

The traveler went on foot or in a bullock cart or on a horse which he

bought for the purpose. As soon as he was out of his own little State or

principality he was among strangers; nobody knew him, nobody took note of

him, and from that time his movements could no longer be traced. He did

not stop in towns or villages, but camped outside of them and sent his

servants in to buy provisions. There were no habitations between

villages. Whenever he was between villages he was an easy prey,

particularly as he usually traveled by night, to avoid the heat. He was

always being overtaken by strangers who offered him the protection of

their company, or asked for the protection of his—and these strangers

were often Thugs, as he presently found out to his cost. The

landholders, the native police, the petty princes, the village officials,

the customs officers were in many cases protectors and harborers of the

Thugs, and betrayed travelers to them for a share of the spoil. At first

this condition of things made it next to impossible for the government to

catch the marauders; they were spirited away by these watchful friends.

All through a vast continent, thus infested, helpless people of every

caste and kind moved along the paths and trails in couples and groups

silently by night, carrying the commerce of the country—treasure,

jewels, money, and petty batches of silks, spices, and all manner of

wares. It was a paradise for the Thug.

When the autumn opened, the Thugs began to gather together by

pre-concert. Other people had to have interpreters at every turn, but

not the Thugs; they could talk together, no matter how far apart they

were born, for they had a language of their own, and they had secret

signs by which they knew each other for Thugs; and they were always

friends. Even their diversities of religion and caste were sunk in

devotion to their calling, and the Moslem and the high-caste and

low-caste Hindoo were staunch and affectionate brothers in Thuggery.

When a gang had been assembled, they had religious worship, and waited

for an omen. They had definite notions about the omens. The cries of

certain animals were good omens, the cries of certain other creatures

were bad omens. A bad omen would stop proceedings and send the men home.

The sword and the strangling-cloth were sacred emblems. The Thugs

worshiped the sword at home before going out to the assembling-place; the

strangling-cloth was worshiped at the place of assembly. The chiefs of

most of the bands performed the religious ceremonies themselves; but the

Kaets delegated them to certain official stranglers (Chaurs). The rites

of the Kaets were so holy that no one but the Chaur was allowed to touch

the vessels and other things used in them.

Thug methods exhibit a curious mixture of caution and the absence of it;

cold business calculation and sudden, unreflecting impulse; but there

were two details which were constant, and not subject to caprice: patient

persistence in following up the prey, and pitilessness when the time came

to act.

Caution was exhibited in the strength of the bands. They never felt

comfortable and confident unless their strength exceeded that of any

party of travelers they were likely to meet by four or fivefold. Yet it

was never their purpose to attack openly, but only when the victims were

off their guard. When they got hold of a party of travelers they often

moved along in their company several days, using all manner of arts to

win their friendship and get their confidence. At last, when this was

accomplished to their satisfaction, the real business began. A few Thugs

were privately detached and sent forward in the dark to select a good

killing-place and dig the graves. When the rest reached the spot a halt

was called, for a rest or a smoke. The travelers were invited to sit.

By signs, the chief appointed certain Thugs to sit down in front of the

travelers as if to wait upon them, others to sit down beside them and

engage them in conversation, and certain expert stranglers to stand

behind the travelers and be ready when the signal was given. The signal

was usually some commonplace remark, like “Bring the tobacco.” Sometimes

a considerable wait ensued after all the actors were in their places—the

chief was biding his time, in order to make everything sure. Meantime,

the talk droned on, dim figures moved about in the dull light, peace and

tranquility reigned, the travelers resigned themselves to the pleasant

reposefulness and comfort of the situation, unconscious of the

death-angels standing motionless at their backs. The time was ripe, now,

and the signal came: “Bring the tobacco.” There was a mute swift

movement, all in the same instant the men at each victim's sides seized

his hands, the man in front seized his feet, and pulled, the man at his

back whipped the cloth around his neck and gave it a twist—the head sunk

forward, the tragedy was over. The bodies were stripped and covered up

in the graves, the spoil packed for transportation, then the Thugs gave

pious thanks to Bhowanee, and departed on further holy service.

The Report shows that the travelers moved in exceedingly small groups

—twos, threes, fours, as a rule; a party with a dozen in it was rare.

The

Thugs themselves seem to have been the only people who moved in force.

They went about in gangs of 10, 15, 25, 40, 60, 100, 150, 200, 250, and

one gang of 310 is mentioned. Considering their numbers, their catch was

not extraordinary—particularly when you consider that they were not in

the least fastidious, but took anybody they could get, whether rich or

poor, and sometimes even killed children. Now and then they killed

women, but it was considered sinful to do it, and unlucky. The “season”

was six or eight months long. One season the half dozen Bundelkand and

Gwalior gangs aggregated 712 men, and they murdered 210 people. One

season the Malwa and Kandeish gangs aggregated 702 men, and they murdered

232. One season the Kandeish and Berar gangs aggregated 963 men, and

they murdered 385 people.

Here is the tally-sheet of a gang of sixty Thugs for a whole season—gang

under two noted chiefs, “Chotee and Sheik Nungoo from Gwalior”:

“Left Poora, in Jhansee, and on arrival at Sarora murdered a

traveler.

“On nearly reaching Bhopal, met 3 Brahmins, and murdered them.

“Cross the Nerbudda; at a village called Hutteea, murdered a Hindoo.

“Went through Aurungabad to Walagow; there met a Havildar of the

barber caste and 5 sepoys (native soldiers); in the evening came to

Jokur, and in the morning killed them near the place where the

treasure-bearers were killed the year before.

“Between Jokur and Dholeea met a sepoy of the shepherd caste; killed

him in the jungle.

“Passed through Dholeea and lodged in a village; two miles beyond,

on the road to Indore, met a Byragee (beggar-holy mendicant);

murdered him at the Thapa.

“In the morning, beyond the Thapa, fell in with 3 Marwarie

travelers; murdered them.

“Near a village on the banks of the Taptee met 4 travelers and

killed them.

“Between Choupra and Dhoreea met a Marwarie; murdered him.

“At Dhoreea met 3 Marwaries; took them two miles and murdered them.

“Two miles further on, overtaken by three treasure-bearers; took

them two miles and murdered them in the jungle.

“Came on to Khurgore Bateesa in Indore, divided spoil, and

dispersed.

“A total of 27 men murdered on one expedition.”

Chotee (to save his neck) was informer, and furnished these facts.

Several things are noticeable about his resume. 1. Business brevity;

2, absence of emotion; 3, smallness of the parties encountered by the 60;

4, variety in character and quality of the game captured; 5, Hindoo and

Mohammedan chiefs in business together for Bhowanee; 6, the sacred caste

of the Brahmins not respected by either; 7, nor yet the character of that

mendicant, that Byragee.

A beggar is a holy creature, and some of the gangs spared him on that

account, no matter how slack business might be; but other gangs

slaughtered not only him, but even that sacredest of sacred creatures,

the fakeer—that repulsive skin-and-bone thing that goes around naked and

mats his bushy hair with dust and dirt, and so beflours his lean body

with ashes that he looks like a specter. Sometimes a fakeer trusted a

shade too far in the protection of his sacredness. In the middle of a

tally-sheet of Feringhea's, who had been out with forty Thugs, I find a

case of the kind. After the killing of thirty-nine men and one woman,

the fakeer appears on the scene:

“Approaching Doregow, met 3 pundits; also a fakeer, mounted on a

pony; he was plastered over with sugar to collect flies, and was

covered with them. Drove off the fakeer, and killed the other

three.

“Leaving Doregow, the fakeer joined again, and went on in company to

Raojana; met 6 Khutries on their way from Bombay to Nagpore. Drove

off the fakeer with stones, and killed the 6 men in camp, and buried

them in the grove.

“Next day the fakeer joined again; made him leave at Mana. Beyond

there, fell in with two Kahars and a sepoy, and came on towards the

place selected for the murder. When near it, the fakeer came again.

Losing all patience with him, gave Mithoo, one of the gang, 5 rupees

($2.50) to murder him, and take the sin upon himself. All four were

strangled, including the fakeer. Surprised to find among the

fakeer's effects 30 pounds of coral, 350 strings of small pearls, 15

strings of large pearls, and a gilt necklace.”

It it curious, the little effect that time has upon a really interesting

circumstance. This one, so old, so long ago gone down into oblivion,

reads with the same freshness and charm that attach to the news in the

morning paper; one's spirits go up, then down, then up again, following

the chances which the fakeer is running; now you hope, now you despair,

now you hope again; and at last everything comes out right, and you feel

a great wave of personal satisfaction go weltering through you, and

without thinking, you put out your hand to pat Mithoo on the back, when

—puff! the whole thing has vanished away, there is nothing there; Mithoo

and all the crowd have been dust and ashes and forgotten, oh, so many,

many, many lagging years! And then comes a sense of injury: you don't

know whether Mithoo got the swag, along with the sin, or had to divide up

the swag and keep all the sin himself. There is no literary art about a

government report. It stops a story right in the most interesting place.

These reports of Thug expeditions run along interminably in one

monotonous tune: “Met a sepoy—killed him; met 5 pundits—killed them;

met 4 Rajpoots and a woman—killed them”—and so on, till the statistics

get to be pretty dry. But this small trip of Feringhea's Forty had some

little variety about it. Once they came across a man hiding in a grave

—a thief; he had stolen 1,100 rupees from Dhunroj Seith of Parowtee.

They strangled him and took the money. They had no patience with

thieves.

They killed two treasure-bearers, and got 4,000 rupees. They came across

two bullocks “laden with copper pice,” and killed the four drivers and

took the money. There must have been half a ton of it. I think it takes

a double handful of pice to make an anna, and 16 annas to make a rupee;

and even in those days the rupee was worth only half a dollar. Coming

back over their tracks from Baroda, they had another picturesque stroke

of luck: “'The Lohars of Oodeypore' put a traveler in their charge for

safety.” Dear, dear, across this abyssmal gulf of time we still see

Feringhea's lips uncover his teeth, and through the dim haze we catch the

incandescent glimmer of his smile. He accepted that trust, good man; and

so we know what went with the traveler.

Even Rajahs had no terrors for Feringhea; he came across an

elephant-driver belonging to the Rajah of Oodeypore and promptly

strangled him.

“A total of 100 men and 5 women murdered on this expedition.”

Among the reports of expeditions we find mention of victims of almost

every quality and estate:

Native soldiers.

Fakeers.

Mendicants.

Holy-water carriers.

Carpenters.

Peddlers.

Tailors.

Blacksmiths.

Policemen (native).

Pastry cooks.

Grooms.

Mecca pilgrims.

Chuprassies.

Treasure-bearers.

Children.

Cowherds.

Gardeners.

Shopkeepers.

Palanquin-bearers.

Farmers.

Bullock-drivers.

Male servants seeking work.

Women servants seeking work.

Shepherds.

Archers.

Table-waiters.

Weavers.

Priests.

Bankers.

Boatmen.

Merchants.

Grass-cutters.

Also a prince's cook; and even the water-carrier of that sublime lord of

lords and king of kings, the Governor-General of India! How broad they

were in their tastes! They also murdered actors—poor wandering

barnstormers. There are two instances recorded; the first one by a gang

of Thugs under a chief who soils a great name borne by a better man

—Kipling's deathless “Gungadin”:

“After murdering 4 sepoys, going on toward Indore, met 4 strolling

players, and persuaded them to come with us, on the pretense that we

would see their performance at the next stage. Murdered them at a

temple near Bhopal.”

Second instance:

“At Deohuttee, joined by comedians. Murdered them eastward of that

place.”

But this gang was a particularly bad crew. On that expedition they

murdered a fakeer and twelve beggars. And yet Bhowanee protected them;

for once when they were strangling a man in a wood when a crowd was going

by close at hand and the noose slipped and the man screamed, Bhowanee

made a camel burst out at the same moment with a roar that drowned the

scream; and before the man could repeat it the breath was choked out of

his body.

The cow is so sacred in India that to kill her keeper is an awful

sacrilege, and even the Thugs recognized this; yet now and then the lust

for blood was too strong, and so they did kill a few cow-keepers. In one

of these instances the witness who killed the cowherd said, “In Thuggee

this is strictly forbidden, and is an act from which no good can come. I

was ill of a fever for ten days afterward. I do believe that evil will

follow the murder of a man with a cow. If there be no cow it does not

signify.” Another Thug said he held the cowherd's feet while this

witness did the strangling. He felt no concern, “because the bad fortune

of such a deed is upon the strangler and not upon the assistants; even if

there should be a hundred of them.”

There were thousands of Thugs roving over India constantly, during many

generations. They made Thuggee a hereditary vocation and taught it to

their sons and to their son's sons. Boys were in full membership as

early as 16 years of age; veterans were still at work at 70. What was

the fascination, what was the impulse? Apparently, it was partly piety,

largely gain, and there is reason to suspect that the sport afforded was

the chiefest fascination of all. Meadows Taylor makes a Thug in one of

his books claim that the pleasure of killing men was the white man's

beast-hunting instinct enlarged, refined, ennobled. I will quote the

passage:

CHAPTER XLVII.

Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an

eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count forty. To save

three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The Thug said:

“How many of you English are passionately devoted to sporting! Your days

and months are passed in its excitement. A tiger, a panther, a buffalo

or a hog rouses your utmost energies for its destruction—you even risk

your lives in its pursuit. How much higher game is a Thug's!”

That must really be the secret of the rise and development of Thuggee.

The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done—these are traits of

the human race at large. We white people are merely modified Thugs;

Thugs fretting under the restraints of a not very thick skin of

civilization; Thugs who long ago enjoyed the slaughter of the Roman

arena, and later the burning of doubtful Christians by authentic

Christians in the public squares, and who now, with the Thugs of Spain

and Nimes, flock to enjoy the blood and misery of the bullring. We have

no tourists of either sex or any religion who are able to resist the

delights of the bull-ring when opportunity offers; and we are gentle

Thugs in the hunting-season, and love to chase a tame rabbit and kill it.

Still, we have made some progress-microscopic, and in truth scarcely

worth mentioning, and certainly nothing to be proud of—still, it is

progress: we no longer take pleasure in slaughtering or burning helpless

men. We have reached a little altitude where we may look down upon the

Indian Thugs with a complacent shudder; and we may even hope for a day,

many centuries hence, when our posterity will look down upon us in the

same way.

There are many indications that the Thug often hunted men for the mere

sport of it; that the fright and pain of the quarry were no more to him

than are the fright and pain of the rabbit or the stag to us; and that he

was no more ashamed of beguiling his game with deceits and abusing its

trust than are we when we have imitated a wild animal's call and shot it

when it honored us with its confidence and came to see what we wanted:

“Madara, son of Nihal, and I, Ramzam, set out from Kotdee in the

cold weather and followed the high road for about twenty days in

search of travelers, until we came to Selempore, where we met a very

old man going to the east. We won his confidence in this manner: he

carried a load which was too heavy for his old age; I said to him,

'You are an old man, I will aid you in carrying your load, as you

are from my part of the country.' He said, 'Very well, take me with

you.' So we took him with us to Selempore, where we slept that

night. We woke him next morning before dawn and set out, and at the

distance of three miles we seated him to rest while it was still

very dark. Madara was ready behind him, and strangled him. He

never spoke a word. He was about 60 or 70 years of age.”

Another gang fell in with a couple of barbers and persuaded them to come

along in their company by promising them the job of shaving the whole

crew—30 Thugs. At the place appointed for the murder 15 got shaved, and

actually paid the barbers for their work. Then killed them and took back

the money.

A gang of forty-two Thugs came across two Brahmins and a shopkeeper on

the road, beguiled them into a grove and got up a concert for their

entertainment. While these poor fellows were listening to the music the

stranglers were standing behind them; and at the proper moment for

dramatic effect they applied the noose.

The most devoted fisherman must have a bite at least as often as once

a week or his passion will cool and he will put up his tackle. The

tiger-sportsman must find a tiger at least once a fortnight or he will

get

tired and quit. The elephant-hunter's enthusiasm will waste away little

by little, and his zeal will perish at last if he plod around a month

without finding a member of that noble family to assassinate.

But when the lust in the hunter's heart is for the noblest of all

quarries, man, how different is the case! and how watery and poor is the

zeal and how childish the endurance of those other hunters by comparison.

Then, neither hunger, nor thirst, nor fatigue, nor deferred hope, nor

monotonous disappointment, nor leaden-footed lapse of time can conquer

the hunter's patience or weaken the joy of his quest or cool the splendid

rage of his desire. Of all the hunting-passions that burn in the breast

of man, there is none that can lift him superior to discouragements like

these but the one—the royal sport, the supreme sport, whose quarry is

his brother. By comparison, tiger-hunting is a colorless poor thing, for

all it has been so bragged about.

Why, the Thug was content to tramp patiently along, afoot, in the wasting

heat of India, week after week, at an average of nine or ten miles a day,

if he might but hope to find game some time or other and refresh his

longing soul with blood. Here is an instance:

“I (Ramzam) and Hyder set out, for the purpose of strangling

travelers, from Guddapore, and proceeded via the Fort of Julalabad,

Newulgunge, Bangermow, on the banks of the Ganges (upwards of 100

miles), from whence we returned by another route. Still no

travelers! till we reached Bowaneegunge, where we fell in with a

traveler, a boatman; we inveigled him and about two miles east of

there Hyder strangled him as he stood—for he was troubled and

afraid, and would not sit. We then made a long journey (about 130

miles) and reached Hussunpore Bundwa, where at the tank we fell in

with a traveler—he slept there that night; next morning we followed

him and tried to win his confidence; at the distance of two miles we

endeavored to induce him to sit down—but he would not, having

become aware of us. I attempted to strangle him as he walked along,

but did not succeed; both of us then fell upon him, he made a great

outcry, 'They are murdering me!' at length we strangled him and

flung his body into a well. After this we returned to our homes,

having been out a month and traveled about 260 miles. A total of

two men murdered on the expedition.”

And here is another case-related by the terrible Futty Khan, a man with a

tremendous record, to be re-mentioned by and by:

“I, with three others, traveled for about 45 days a distance of

about 200 miles in search of victims along the highway to Bundwa and

returned by Davodpore (another 200 miles) during which journey we

had only one murder, which happened in this manner. Four miles to

the east of Noubustaghat we fell in with a traveler, an old man. I,

with Koshal and Hyder, inveigled him and accompanied him that day

within 3 miles of Rampoor, where, after dark, in a lonely place, we

got him to sit down and rest; and while I kept him in talk, seated

before him, Hyder behind strangled him: he made no resistance.

Koshal stabbed him under the arms and in the throat, and we flung

the body into a running stream. We got about 4 or 5 rupees each ($2

or $2.50). We then proceeded homewards. A total of one man

murdered on this expedition.”

There. They tramped 400 miles, were gone about three months, and

harvested two dollars and a half apiece. But the mere pleasure of the

hunt was sufficient. That was pay enough. They did no grumbling.

Every now and then in this big book one comes across that pathetic

remark: “we tried to get him to sit down but he would not.” It tells the

whole story. Some accident had awakened the suspicion in him that these

smooth friends who had been petting and coddling him and making him feel

so safe and so fortunate after his forlorn and lonely wanderings were the

dreaded Thugs; and now their ghastly invitation to “sit and rest” had

confirmed its truth. He knew there was no help for him, and that he was

looking his last upon earthly things, but “he would not sit.” No, not

that—it was too awful to think of!

There are a number of instances which indicate that when a man had once

tasted the regal joys of man-hunting he could not be content with the

dull monotony of a crimeless life after ward. Example, from a Thug's

testimony:

“We passed through to Kurnaul, where we found a former Thug named

Junooa, an old comrade of ours, who had turned religious mendicant

and become a disciple and holy. He came to us in the serai and

weeping with joy returned to his old trade.”

Neither wealth nor honors nor dignities could satisfy a reformed Thug for

long. He would throw them all away, someday, and go back to the lurid

pleasures of hunting men, and being hunted himself by the British.

Ramzam was taken into a great native grandee's service and given

authority over five villages. “My authority extended over these people

to summons them to my presence, to make them stand or sit. I dressed

well, rode my pony, and had two sepoys, a scribe and a village guard to

attend me. During three years I used to pay each village a monthly

visit, and no one suspected that I was a Thug! The chief man used to

wait on me to transact business, and as I passed along, old and young

made their salaam to me.”

And yet during that very three years he got leave of absence “to attend a

wedding,” and instead went off on a Thugging lark with six other Thugs

and hunted the highway for fifteen days!—with satisfactory results.

Afterwards he held a great office under a Rajah. There he had ten miles

of country under his command and a military guard of fifteen men, with

authority to call out 2,000 more upon occasion. But the British got on

his track, and they crowded him so that he had to give himself up. See

what a figure he was when he was gotten up for style and had all his

things on: “I was fully armed—a sword, shield, pistols, a matchlock

musket and a flint gun, for I was fond of being thus arrayed, and when so

armed feared not though forty men stood before me.”

He gave himself up and proudly proclaimed himself a Thug. Then by

request he agreed to betray his friend and pal, Buhram, a Thug with the

most tremendous record in India. “I went to the house where Buhram slept

(often has he led our gangs!) I woke him, he knew me well, and came

outside to me. It was a cold night, so under pretence of warming myself,

but in reality to have light for his seizure by the guards, I lighted

some straw and made a blaze. We were warming our hands. The guards drew

around us. I said to them, 'This is Buhram,' and he was seized just as a

cat seizes a mouse. Then Buhram said, 'I am a Thug! my father was a

Thug, my grandfather was a Thug, and I have thugged with many!'”

So spoke the mighty hunter, the mightiest of the mighty, the Gordon

Cumming of his day. Not much regret noticeable in it.—[“Having planted

a bullet in the shoulder-bone of an elephant, and caused the agonized

creature to lean for support against a tree, I proceeded to brew some

coffee. Having refreshed myself, taking observations of the elephant's

spasms and writhings between the sips, I resolved to make experiments on

vulnerable points, and, approaching very near, I fired several bullets at

different parts of his enormous skull. He only acknowledged the shots by

a salaam-like movement of his trunk, with the point of which he gently

touched the wounds with a striking and peculiar action. Surprised and

shocked to find that I was only prolonging the suffering of the noble

beast, which bore its trials with such dignified composure, I resolved to

finish the proceeding with all possible despatch, and accordingly opened

fire upon him from the left side. Aiming at the shoulder, I fired six

shots with the two-grooved rifle, which must have eventually proved

mortal, after which I fired six shots at the same part with the Dutch

six-founder. Large tears now trickled down from his eyes, which he

slowly shut and opened, his colossal frame shivered convulsively, and

falling on his side he expired.”—Gordon Cumming.]

So many many times this Official Report leaves one's curiosity

unsatisfied. For instance, here is a little paragraph out of the record

of a certain band of 193 Thugs, which has that defect:

“Fell in with Lall Sing Subahdar and his family, consisting of nine

persons. Traveled with them two days, and the third put them all to

death except the two children, little boys of one and a half years

old.”

There it stops. What did they do with those poor little fellows? What

was their subsequent history? Did they purpose training them up as

Thugs? How could they take care of such little creatures on a march

which stretched over several months? No one seems to have cared to ask

any questions about the babies. But I do wish I knew.

One would be apt to imagine that the Thugs were utterly callous, utterly

destitute of human feelings, heartless toward their own families as well

as toward other people's; but this was not so. Like all other Indians,

they had a passionate love for their kin. A shrewd British officer who

knew the Indian character, took that characteristic into account in

laying his plans for the capture of Eugene Sue's famous Feringhea. He

found out Feringhea's hiding-place, and sent a guard by night to seize

him, but the squad was awkward and he got away. However, they got the

rest of the family—the mother, wife, child, and brother—and brought

them to the officer, at Jubbulpore; the officer did not fret, but bided

his time: “I knew Feringhea would not go far while links so dear to him

were in my hands.” He was right. Feringhea knew all the danger he was

running by staying in the neighborhood, still he could not tear himself

away. The officer found that he divided his time between five villages

where he had relatives and friends who could get news for him from his

family in Jubbulpore jail; and that he never slept two consecutive nights

in the same village. The officer traced out his several haunts, then

pounced upon all the five villages on the one night and at the same hour,

and got his man.

Another example of family affection. A little while previously to the

capture of Feringhea's family, the British officer had captured

Feringhea's foster-brother, leader of a gang of ten, and had tried the

eleven and condemned them to be hanged. Feringhea's captured family

arrived at the jail the day before the execution was to take place. The

foster-brother, Jhurhoo, entreated to be allowed to see the aged mother

and the others. The prayer was granted, and this is what took place—it

is the British officer who speaks:

“In the morning, just before going to the scaffold, the interview

took place before me. He fell at the old woman's feet and begged

that she would relieve him from the obligations of the milk with

which she had nourished him from infancy, as he was about to die

before he could fulfill any of them. She placed her hands on his

head, and he knelt, and she said she forgave him all, and bid him

die like a man.”

If a capable artist should make a picture of it, it would be full of

dignity and solemnity and pathos; and it could touch you. You would

imagine it to be anything but what it was. There is reverence there, and

tenderness, and gratefulness, and compassion, and resignation, and

fortitude, and self-respect—and no sense of disgrace, no thought of

dishonor. Everything is there that goes to make a noble parting, and

give it a moving grace and beauty and dignity. And yet one of these

people is a Thug and the other a mother of Thugs! The incongruities of

our human nature seem to reach their limit here.

I wish to make note of one curious thing while I think of it. One of the

very commonest remarks to be found in this bewildering array of Thug

confessions is this:

“Strangled him and threw him in a well!” In one case they threw sixteen

into a well—and they had thrown others in the same well before. It

makes a body thirsty to read about it.

And there is another very curious thing. The bands of Thugs had private

graveyards. They did not like to kill and bury at random, here and there

and everywhere. They preferred to wait, and toll the victims along, and

get to one of their regular burying-places ['bheels') if they could. In

the little kingdom of Oude, which was about half as big as Ireland and

about as big as the State of Maine, they had two hundred and seventy-four

'bheels'. They were scattered along fourteen hundred miles of road, at

an average of only five miles apart, and the British government traced

out and located each and every one of them and set them down on the map.

The Oude bands seldom went out of their own country, but they did a

thriving business within its borders. So did outside bands who came in

and helped. Some of the Thug leaders of Oude were noted for their

successful careers. Each of four of them confessed to above 300 murders;

another to nearly 400; our friend Ramzam to 604—he is the one who got

leave of absence to attend a wedding and went thugging instead; and he is

also the one who betrayed Buhram to the British.

But the biggest records of all were the murder-lists of Futty Khan and

Buhram. Futty Khan's number is smaller than Ramzam's, but he is placed

at the head because his average is the best in Oude-Thug history per year

of service. His slaughter was 508 men in twenty years, and he was still

a young man when the British stopped his industry. Buhram's list was 931

murders, but it took him forty years. His average was one man and nearly

all of another man per month for forty years, but Futty Khan's average

was two men and a little of another man per month during his twenty years

of usefulness.

There is one very striking thing which I wish to call attention to. You

have surmised from the listed callings followed by the victims of the

Thugs that nobody could travel the Indian roads unprotected and live to

get through; that the Thugs respected no quality, no vocation, no

religion, nobody; that they killed every unarmed man that came in their

way. That is wholly true—with one reservation. In all the long file of

Thug confessions an English traveler is mentioned but once—and this is

what the Thug says of the circumstance:

“He was on his way from Mhow to Bombay. We studiously avoided him.

He proceeded next morning with a number of travelers who had sought

his protection, and they took the road to Baroda.”

We do not know who he was; he flits across the page of this rusty old

book and disappears in the obscurity beyond; but he is an impressive

figure, moving through that valley of death serene and unafraid, clothed

in the might of the English name.

We have now followed the big official book through, and we understand

what Thuggee was, what a bloody terror it was, what a desolating scourge

it was. In 1830 the English found this cancerous organization imbedded

in the vitals of the empire, doing its devastating work in secrecy, and

assisted, protected, sheltered, and hidden by innumerable confederates

—big and little native chiefs, customs officers, village officials, and

native police, all ready to lie for it, and the mass of the people,

through fear, persistently pretending to know nothing about its doings;

and this condition of things had existed for generations, and was

formidable with the sanctions of age and old custom. If ever there was

an unpromising task, if ever there was a hopeless task in the world,

surely it was offered here—the task of conquering Thuggee. But that

little handful of English officials in India set their sturdy and

confident grip upon it, and ripped it out, root and branch! How modest

do Captain Vallancey's words sound now, when we read them again, knowing

what we know:

“The day that sees this far-spread evil completely eradicated from

India, and known only in name, will greatly tend to immortalize

British rule in the East.”

It would be hard to word a claim more modestly than that for this most

noble work.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you

must have somebody to divide it with.

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

We left Bombay for Allahabad by a night train. It is the custom of the

country to avoid day travel when it can conveniently be done. But there

is one trouble: while you can seemingly “secure” the two lower berths by

making early application, there is no ticket as witness of it, and no

other producible evidence in case your proprietorship shall chance to be

challenged. The word “engaged” appears on the window, but it doesn't

state who the compartment is engaged, for. If your Satan and your Barney

arrive before somebody else's servants, and spread the bedding on the two

sofas and then stand guard till you come, all will be well; but if they

step aside on an errand, they may find the beds promoted to the two

shelves, and somebody else's demons standing guard over their master's

beds, which in the meantime have been spread upon your sofas.

You do not pay anything extra for your sleeping place; that is where the

trouble lies. If you buy a fare-ticket and fail to use it, there is room

thus made available for someone else; but if the place were secured to

you it would remain vacant, and yet your ticket would secure you another

place when you were presently ready to travel.

However, no explanation of such a system can make it seem quite rational

to a person who has been used to a more rational system. If our people

had the arranging of it, we should charge extra for securing the place,

and then the road would suffer no loss if the purchaser did not occupy

it.

The present system encourages good manners—and also discourages them.

If a young girl has a lower berth and an elderly lady comes in, it is

usual for the girl to offer her place to this late comer; and it is usual

for the late comer to thank her courteously and take it. But the thing

happens differently sometimes. When we were ready to leave Bombay my

daughter's satchels were holding possession of her berth—a lower one.

At the last moment, a middle-aged American lady swarmed into the

compartment, followed by native porters laden with her baggage. She was

growling and snarling and scolding, and trying to make herself

phenomenally disagreeable; and succeeding. Without a word, she hoisted

the satchels into the hanging shelf, and took possession of that lower

berth.

On one of our trips Mr. Smythe and I got out at a station to walk up and

down, and when we came back Smythe's bed was in the hanging shelf and an

English cavalry officer was in bed on the sofa which he had lately been

occupying. It was mean to be glad about it, but it is the way we are

made; I could not have been gladder if it had been my enemy that had

suffered this misfortune. We all like to see people in trouble, if it

doesn't cost us anything. I was so happy over Mr. Smythe's chagrin that

I couldn't go to sleep for thinking of it and enjoying it. I knew he

supposed the officer had committed the robbery himself, whereas without a

doubt the officer's servant had done it without his knowledge. Mr.

Smythe kept this incident warm in his heart, and longed for a chance to

get even with somebody for it. Sometime afterward the opportunity came,

in Calcutta. We were leaving on a 24-hour journey to Darjeeling. Mr.

Barclay, the general superintendent, has made special provision for our

accommodation, Mr. Smythe said; so there was no need to hurry about

getting to the train; consequently, we were a little late.

When we arrived, the usual immense turmoil and confusion of a great

Indian station were in full blast. It was an immoderately long train,

for all the natives of India were going by it somewhither, and the native

officials were being pestered to frenzy by belated and anxious people.

They didn't know where our car was, and couldn't remember having received

any orders about it. It was a deep disappointment; moreover, it looked

as if our half of our party would be left behind altogether. Then Satan

came running and said he had found a compartment with one shelf and one

sofa unoccupied, and had made our beds and had stowed our baggage. We

rushed to the place, and just as the train was ready to pull out and the

porters were slamming the doors to, all down the line, an officer of the

Indian Civil Service, a good friend of ours, put his head in and said:—

“I have been hunting for you everywhere. What are you doing here? Don't

you know——”

The train started before he could finish. Mr. Smythe's opportunity was

come. His bedding, on the shelf, at once changed places with the

bedding—a stranger's—that was occupying the sofa that was opposite to

mine. About ten o'clock we stopped somewhere, and a large Englishman of

official military bearing stepped in. We pretended to be asleep. The

lamps were covered, but there was light enough for us to note his look of

surprise. He stood there, grand and fine, peering down at Smythe, and

wondering in silence at the situation. After a bit he said:—

“Well!” And that was all.

But that was enough. It was easy to understand. It meant: “This is

extraordinary. This is high-handed. I haven't had an experience like

this before.”

He sat down on his baggage, and for twenty minutes we watched him through

our eyelashes, rocking and swaying there to the motion of the train.

Then we came to a station, and he got up and went out, muttering: “I must

find a lower berth, or wait over.” His servant came presently and carried

away his things.

Mr. Smythe's sore place was healed, his hunger for revenge was satisfied.

But he couldn't sleep, and neither could I; for this was a venerable old

car, and nothing about it was taut. The closet door slammed all night,

and defied every fastening we could invent. We got up very much jaded,

at dawn, and stepped out at a way station; and, while we were taking a

cup of coffee, that Englishman ranged up alongside, and somebody said to

him:

“So you didn't stop off, after all?”

“No. The guard found a place for me that had been engaged and not

occupied. I had a whole saloon car all to myself—oh, quite palatial!

I never had such luck in my life.”

That was our car, you see. We moved into it, straight off, the family

and all. But I asked the English gentleman to remain, and he did. A

pleasant man, an infantry colonel; and doesn't know, yet, that Smythe

robbed him of his berth, but thinks it was done by Smythe's servant

without Smythe's knowledge. He was assisted in gathering this

impression.

The Indian trains are manned by natives exclusively. The Indian stations

except very large and important ones—are manned entirely by natives, and

so are the posts and telegraphs. The rank and file of the police are

natives. All these people are pleasant and accommodating. One day I

left an express train to lounge about in that perennially ravishing show,

the ebb and flow and whirl of gaudy natives, that is always surging up

and down the spacious platform of a great Indian station; and I lost

myself in the ecstasy of it, and when I turned, the train was moving

swiftly away. I was going to sit down and wait for another train, as I

would have done at home; I had no thought of any other course. But a

native official, who had a green flag in his hand, saw me, and said

politely:

“Don't you belong in the train, sir?”

“Yes.” I said.

He waved his flag, and the train came back! And he put me aboard with as

much ceremony as if I had been the General Superintendent. They are

kindly people, the natives. The face and the bearing that indicate a

surly spirit and a bad heart seemed to me to be so rare among Indians—so

nearly non-existent, in fact—that I sometimes wondered if Thuggee wasn't

a dream, and not a reality. The bad hearts are there, but I believe that

they are in a small, poor minority. One thing is sure: They are much the

most interesting people in the world—and the nearest to being

incomprehensible. At any rate, the hardest to account for. Their

character and their history, their customs and their religion, confront

you with riddles at every turn-riddles which are a trifle more perplexing

after they are explained than they were before. You can get the facts of

a custom—like caste, and Suttee, and Thuggee, and so on—and with the

facts a theory which tries to explain, but never quite does it to your

satisfaction. You can never quite understand how so strange a thing

could have been born, nor why.

For instance—the Suttee. This is the explanation of it:

A woman who throws away her life when her husband dies is instantly

joined to him again, and is forever afterward happy with him in heaven;

her family will build a little monument to her, or a temple, and will

hold her in honor, and, indeed, worship her memory always; they will

themselves be held in honor by the public; the woman's self-sacrifice has

conferred a noble and lasting distinction upon her posterity. And,

besides, see what she has escaped: If she had elected to live, she would

be a disgraced person; she could not remarry; her family would despise

her and disown her; she would be a friendless outcast, and miserable all

her days.

Very well, you say, but the explanation is not complete yet. How did

people come to drift into such a strange custom? What was the origin of

the idea? “Well, nobody knows; it was probably a revelation sent down by

the gods.” One more thing: Why was such a cruel death chosen—why

wouldn't a gentle one have answered? “Nobody knows; maybe that was a

revelation, too.”

No—you can never understand it. It all seems impossible. You resolve

to believe that a widow never burnt herself willingly, but went to her

death because she was afraid to defy public opinion. But you are not

able to keep that position. History drives you from it. Major Sleeman

has a convincing case in one of his books. In his government on the

Nerbudda he made a brave attempt on the 28th of March, 1828, to put down

Suttee on his own hook and without warrant from the Supreme Government of

India. He could not foresee that the Government would put it down itself

eight months later. The only backing he had was a bold nature and a

compassionate heart. He issued his proclamation abolishing the Suttee in

his district. On the morning of Tuesday—note the day of the week—the

24th of the following November, Ummed Singh Upadhya, head of the most

respectable and most extensive Brahmin family in the district, died, and

presently came a deputation of his sons and grandsons to beg that his old

widow might be allowed to burn herself upon his pyre. Sleeman threatened

to enforce his order, and punish severely any man who assisted; and he

placed a police guard to see that no one did so. From the early morning

the old widow of sixty-five had been sitting on the bank of the sacred

river by her dead, waiting through the long hours for the permission; and

at last the refusal came instead. In one little sentence Sleeman gives

you a pathetic picture of this lonely old gray figure: all day and all

night “she remained sitting by the edge of the water without eating or

drinking.” The next morning the body of the husband was burned to ashes

in a pit eight feet square and three or four feet deep, in the view of

several thousand spectators. Then the widow waded out to a bare rock in

the river, and everybody went away but her sons and other relations. All

day she sat there on her rock in the blazing sun without food or drink,

and with no clothing but a sheet over her shoulders.

The relatives remained with her and all tried to persuade her to desist

from her purpose, for they deeply loved her. She steadily refused. Then

a part of the family went to Sleeman's house, ten miles away, and tried

again to get him to let her burn herself. He refused, hoping to save her

yet.

All that day she scorched in her sheet on the rock, and all that night

she kept her vigil there in the bitter cold. Thursday morning, in the

sight of her relatives, she went through a ceremonial which said more to

them than any words could have done; she put on the dhaja (a coarse red

turban) and broke her bracelets in pieces. By these acts she became a

dead person in the eye of the law, and excluded from her caste forever.

By the iron rule of ancient custom, if she should now choose to live she

could never return to her family. Sleeman was in deep trouble. If she

starved herself to death her family would be disgraced; and, moreover,

starving would be a more lingering misery than the death by fire. He

went back in the evening thoroughly worried. The old woman remained on

her rock, and there in the morning he found her with her dhaja still on

her head. “She talked very collectedly, telling me that she had

determined to mix her ashes with those of her departed husband, and

should patiently wait my permission to do so, assured that God would

enable her to sustain life till that was given, though she dared not eat

or drink. Looking at the sun, then rising before her over a long and

beautiful reach of the river, she said calmly, 'My soul has been for five

days with my husband's near that sun; nothing but my earthly frame is

left; and this, I know, you will in time suffer to be mixed with his

ashes in yonder pit, because it is not in your nature or usage wantonly

to prolong the miseries of a poor old woman.'”

He assured her that it was his desire and duty to save her, and to urge

her to live, and to keep her family from the disgrace of being thought

her murderers. But she said she “was not afraid of their being thought

so; that they had all, like good children, done everything in their power

to induce her to live, and to abide with them; and if I should consent I

know they would love and honor me, but my duties to them have now ended.

I commit them all to your care, and I go to attend my husband, Ummed

Singh Upadhya, with whose ashes on the funeral pile mine have been

already three times mixed.”

She believed that she and he had been upon the earth three several times

as wife and husband, and that she had burned herself to death three times

upon his pyre. That is why she said that strange thing. Since she had

broken her bracelets and put on the red turban she regarded herself as a

corpse; otherwise she would not have allowed herself to do her husband

the irreverence of pronouncing his name. “This was the first time in her

long life that she had ever uttered her husband's name, for in India no

woman, high or low, ever pronounces the name of her husband.”

Major Sleeman still tried to shake her purpose. He promised to build her

a fine house among the temples of her ancestors upon the bank of the

river and make handsome provision for her out of rent-free lands if she

would consent to live; and if she wouldn't he would allow no stone or

brick to ever mark the place where she died. But she only smiled and

said, “My pulse has long ceased to beat, my spirit has departed; I shall

suffer nothing in the burning; and if you wish proof, order some fire and

you shall see this arm consumed without giving me any pain.”

Sleeman was now satisfied that he could not alter her purpose. He sent

for all the chief members of the family and said he would suffer her to

burn herself if they would enter into a written engagement to abandon the

suttee in their family thenceforth. They agreed; the papers were drawn

out and signed, and at noon, Saturday, word was sent to the poor old

woman. She seemed greatly pleased. The ceremonies of bathing were gone

through with, and by three o'clock she was ready and the fire was briskly

burning in the pit. She had now gone without food or drink during more

than four days and a half. She came ashore from her rock, first wetting

her sheet in the waters of the sacred river, for without that safeguard

any shadow which might fall upon her would convey impurity to her; then

she walked to the pit, leaning upon one of her sons and a nephew—the

distance was a hundred and fifty yards.

“I had sentries placed all around, and no other person was allowed to

approach within five paces. She came on with a calm and cheerful

countenance, stopped once, and casting her eyes upwards, said, 'Why have

they kept me five days from thee, my husband?' On coming to the sentries

her supporters stopped and remained standing; she moved on, and walked

once around the pit, paused a moment, and while muttering a prayer, threw

some flowers into the fire. She then walked up deliberately and steadily

to the brink, stepped into the centre of the flame, sat down, and leaning

back in the midst as if reposing upon a couch, was consumed without

uttering a shriek or betraying one sign of agony.”

It is fine and beautiful. It compels one's reverence and respect—no,

has it freely, and without compulsion. We see how the custom, once

started, could continue, for the soul of it is that stupendous power,

Faith; faith brought to the pitch of effectiveness by the cumulative

force of example and long use and custom; but we cannot understand how

the first widows came to take to it. That is a perplexing detail.

Sleeman says that it was usual to play music at the suttee, but that the

white man's notion that this was to drown the screams of the martyr is

not correct; that it had a quite different purpose. It was believed that

the martyr died prophecying; that the prophecies sometimes foretold

disaster, and it was considered a kindness to those upon whom it was to

fall to drown the voice and keep them in ignorance of the misfortune that

was to come.

CHAPTER XLIX.

He had had much experience of physicians, and said “the only way to keep

your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like,

and do what you'd druther not.”

—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

It was a long journey—two nights, one day, and part of another day, from

Bombay eastward to Allahabad; but it was always interesting, and it was

not fatiguing. At first the night travel promised to be fatiguing, but

that was on account of pyjamas. This foolish night-dress consists of

jacket and drawers. Sometimes they are made of silk, sometimes of a

raspy, scratchy, slazy woolen material with a sandpaper surface. The

drawers are loose elephant-legged and elephant-waisted things, and

instead of buttoning around the body there is a drawstring to produce the

required shrinkage. The jacket is roomy, and one buttons it in front.

Pyjamas are hot on a hot night and cold on a cold night—defects which a

nightshirt is free from. I tried the pyjamas in order to be in the

fashion; but I was obliged to give them up, I couldn't stand them. There

was no sufficient change from day-gear to night-gear. I missed the

refreshing and luxurious sense, induced by the night-gown, of being

undressed, emancipated, set free from restraints and trammels. In place

of that, I had the worried, confined, oppressed, suffocated sense of

being abed with my clothes on. All through the warm half of the night

the coarse surfaces irritated my skin and made it feel baked and

feverish, and the dreams which came in the fitful flurries of slumber

were such as distress the sleep of the damned, or ought to; and all

through the cold other half of the night I could get no time for sleep

because I had to employ it all in stealing blankets. But blankets are of

no value at such a time; the higher they are piled the more effectively

they cork the cold in and keep it from getting out. The result is that

your legs are ice, and you know how you will feel by and by when you are

buried. In a sane interval I discarded the pyjamas, and led a rational

and comfortable life thenceforth.

Out in the country in India, the day begins early. One sees a plain,

perfectly flat, dust-colored and brick-yardy, stretching limitlessly away

on every side in the dim gray light, striped everywhere with hard-beaten

narrow paths, the vast flatness broken at wide intervals by bunches of

spectral trees that mark where villages are; and along all the paths are

slender women and the black forms of lanky naked men moving, to their

work, the women with brass water-jars on their heads, the men carrying

hoes. The man is not entirely naked; always there is a bit of white rag,

a loin-cloth; it amounts to a bandage, and is a white accent on his black

person, like the silver band around the middle of a pipe-stem. Sometimes

he also wears a fluffy and voluminous white turban, and this adds a

second accent. He then answers properly to Miss Gordon Cumming's

flash-light picture of him—as a person who is dressed in “a turban

and a pocket handkerchief.”

All day long one has this monotony of dust-colored dead levels and

scattering bunches of trees and mud villages. You soon realize that

India is not beautiful; still there is an enchantment about it that is

beguiling, and which does not pall. You cannot tell just what it is that

makes the spell, perhaps, but you feel it and confess it, nevertheless.

Of course, at bottom, you know in a vague way that it is history; it is

that that affects you, a haunting sense of the myriads of human lives

that have blossomed, and withered, and perished here, repeating and

repeating and repeating, century after century, and age after age, the

barren and meaningless process; it is this sense that gives to this

forlorn, uncomely land power to speak to the spirit and make friends with

it; to speak to it with a voice bitter with satire, but eloquent with

melancholy. The deserts of Australia and the ice-barrens of Greenland

have no speech, for they have no venerable history; with nothing to tell

of man and his vanities, his fleeting glories and his miseries, they have

nothing wherewith to spiritualize their ugliness and veil it with a

charm.

There is nothing pretty about an Indian village—a mud one—and I do not

remember that we saw any but mud ones on that long flight to Allahabad.

It is a little bunch of dirt-colored mud hovels jammed together within a

mud wall. As a rule, the rains had beaten down parts of some of the

houses, and this gave the village the aspect of a mouldering and hoary

ruin. I believe the cattle and the vermin live inside the wall; for I

saw cattle coming out and cattle going in; and whenever I saw a villager,

he was scratching. This last is only circumstantial evidence, but I

think it has value. The village has a battered little temple or two, big

enough to hold an idol, and with custom enough to fat-up a priest and

keep him comfortable. Where there are Mohammedans there are generally a

few sorry tombs outside the village that have a decayed and neglected

look. The villages interested me because of things which Major Sleeman

says about them in his books—particularly what he says about the

division of labor in them. He says that the whole face of India is

parceled out into estates of villages; that nine-tenths of the vast

population of the land consist of cultivators of the soil; that it is

these cultivators who inhabit the villages; that there are certain

“established” village servants—mechanics and others who are apparently

paid a wage by the village at large, and whose callings remain in certain

families and are handed down from father to son, like an estate. He

gives a list of these established servants: Priest, blacksmith,

carpenter, accountant, washerman, basketmaker, potter, watchman, barber,

shoemaker, brazier, confectioner, weaver, dyer, etc. In his day witches

abounded, and it was not thought good business wisdom for a man to marry

his daughter into a family that hadn't a witch in it, for she would need

a witch on the premises to protect her children from the evil spells

which would certainly be cast upon them by the witches connected with the

neighboring families.

The office of midwife was hereditary in the family of the basket-maker.

It belonged to his wife. She might not be competent, but the office was

hers, anyway. Her pay was not high—25 cents for a boy, and half as much

for a girl. The girl was not desired, because she would be a disastrous

expense by and by. As soon as she should be old enough to begin to wear

clothes for propriety's sake, it would be a disgrace to the family if she

were not married; and to marry her meant financial ruin; for by custom

the father must spend upon feasting and wedding-display everything he had

and all he could borrow—in fact, reduce himself to a condition of

poverty which he might never more recover from.

It was the dread of this prospective ruin which made the killing of

girl-babies so prevalent in India in the old days before England laid the

iron hand of her prohibitions upon the piteous slaughter. One may judge

of how prevalent the custom was, by one of Sleeman's casual electrical

remarks, when he speaks of children at play in villages—where

girl-voices were never heard!

The wedding-display folly is still in full force in India, and by

consequence the destruction of girl-babies is still furtively practiced;

but not largely, because of the vigilance of the government and the

sternness of the penalties it levies.

In some parts of India the village keeps in its pay three other servants:

an astrologer to tell the villager when he may plant his crop, or make a

journey, or marry a wife, or strangle a child, or borrow a dog, or climb

a tree, or catch a rat, or swindle a neighbor, without offending the

alert and solicitous heavens; and what his dream means, if he has had one

and was not bright enough to interpret it himself by the details of his

dinner; the two other established servants were the tiger-persuader and

the hailstorm discourager. The one kept away the tigers if he could, and

collected the wages anyway, and the other kept off the hailstorms, or

explained why he failed. He charged the same for explaining a failure

that he did for scoring a success. A man is an idiot who can't earn a

living in India.

Major Sleeman reveals the fact that the trade union and the boycott are

antiquities in India. India seems to have originated everything. The

“sweeper” belongs to the bottom caste; he is the lowest of the low—all

other castes despise him and scorn his office. But that does not trouble

him. His caste is a caste, and that is sufficient for him, and so he is

proud of it, not ashamed. Sleeman says:

“It is perhaps not known to many of my countrymen, even in India,

that in every town and city in the country the right of sweeping the

houses and streets is a monopoly, and is supported entirely by the

pride of castes among the scavengers, who are all of the lowest

class. The right of sweeping within a certain range is recognized

by the caste to belong to a certain member; and if any other member

presumes to sweep within that range, he is excommunicated—no other

member will smoke out of his pipe or drink out of his jug; and he

can get restored to caste only by a feast to the whole body of

sweepers. If any housekeeper within a particular circle happens to

offend the sweeper of that range, none of his filth will be removed

till he pacifies him, because no other sweeper will dare to touch

it; and the people of a town are often more tyrannized over by these

people than by any other.”

A footnote by Major Sleeman's editor, Mr. Vincent Arthur Smith, says that

in our day this tyranny of the sweepers' guild is one of the many

difficulties which bar the progress of Indian sanitary reform. Think of

this:

“The sweepers cannot be readily coerced, because no Hindoo or

Mussulman would do their work to save his life, nor will he pollute

himself by beating the refractory scavenger.”

They certainly do seem to have the whip-hand; it would be difficult to

imagine a more impregnable position. “The vested rights described in the

text are so fully recognized in practice that they are frequently the

subject of sale or mortgage.”

Just like a milk-route; or like a London crossing-sweepership. It is

said that the London crossing-sweeper's right to his crossing is

recognized by the rest of the guild; that they protect him in its

possession; that certain choice crossings are valuable property, and are

saleable at high figures. I have noticed that the man who sweeps in

front of the Army and Navy Stores has a wealthy South African

aristocratic style about him; and when he is off his guard, he has

exactly that look on his face which you always see in the face of a man

who is saving up his daughter to marry her to a duke.

It appears from Sleeman that in India the occupation of elephant-driver

is confined to Mohammedans. I wonder why that is. The water-carrier

['bheestie') is a Mohammedan, but it is said that the reason of that is,

that the Hindoo's religion does not allow him to touch the skin of dead

kine, and that is what the water-sack is made of; it would defile him.

And it doesn't allow him to eat meat; the animal that furnished the meat

was murdered, and to take any creature's life is a sin. It is a good and

gentle religion, but inconvenient.

A great Indian river, at low water, suggests the familiar anatomical

picture of a skinned human body, the intricate mesh of interwoven muscles

and tendons to stand for water-channels, and the archipelagoes of fat and

flesh inclosed by them to stand for the sandbars. Somewhere on this

journey we passed such a river, and on a later journey we saw in the

Sutlej the duplicate of that river. Curious rivers they are; low shores

a dizzy distance apart, with nothing between but an enormous acreage of

sand-flats with sluggish little veins of water dribbling around amongst

them; Saharas of sand, smallpox-pitted with footprints punctured in belts

as straight as the equator clear from the one shore to the other (barring

the channel-interruptions)—a dry-shod ferry, you see. Long railway

bridges are required for this sort of rivers, and India has them. You

approach Allahabad by a very long one. It was now carrying us across the

bed of the Jumna, a bed which did not seem to have been slept in for one

while or more. It wasn't all river-bed—most of it was overflow ground.

Allahabad means “City of God.” I get this from the books. From a printed

curiosity—a letter written by one of those brave and confident Hindoo

strugglers with the English tongue, called a “babu”—I got a more

compressed translation: “Godville.” It is perfectly correct, but that is

the most that can be said for it.

We arrived in the forenoon, and short-handed; for Satan got left behind

somewhere that morning, and did not overtake us until after nightfall.

It seemed very peaceful without him. The world seemed asleep and

dreaming.

I did not see the native town, I think. I do not remember why; for an

incident connects it with the Great Mutiny, and that is enough to make

any place interesting. But I saw the English part of the city. It is a

town of wide avenues and noble distances, and is comely and alluring, and

full of suggestions of comfort and leisure, and of the serenity which a

good conscience buttressed by a sufficient bank account gives. The

bungalows (dwellings) stand well back in the seclusion and privacy of

large enclosed compounds (private grounds, as we should say) and in the

shade and shelter of trees. Even the photographer and the prosperous

merchant ply their industries in the elegant reserve of big compounds,

and the citizens drive in there upon their business occasions. And not

in

cabs—no; in the Indian cities cabs are for the drifting stranger; all

the white citizens have private carriages; and each carriage has a flock

of white-turbaned black footmen and drivers all over it. The vicinity of

a lecture-hall looks like a snowstorm,—and makes the lecturer feel like

an opera. India has many names, and they are correctly descriptive. It

is the Land of Contradictions, the Land of Subtlety and Superstition, the

Land of Wealth and Poverty, the Land of Splendor and Desolation, the Land

of Plague and Famine, the Land of the Thug and the Poisoner, and of the

Meek and the Patient, the Land of the Suttee, the Land of the

Unreinstatable Widow, the Land where All Life is Holy, the Land of

Cremation, the Land where the Vulture is a Grave and a Monument, the Land

of the Multitudinous Gods; and if signs go for anything, it is the Land

of the Private Carriage.

In Bombay the forewoman of a millinery shop came to the hotel in her

private carriage to take the measure for a gown—not for me, but for

another. She had come out to India to make a temporary stay, but was

extending it indefinitely; indeed, she was purposing to end her days

there. In London, she said, her work had been hard, her hours long; for

economy's sake she had had to live in shabby rooms and far away from the

shop, watch the pennies, deny herself many of the common comforts of

life, restrict herself in effect to its bare necessities, eschew cabs,

travel third-class by underground train to and from her work, swallowing

coal-smoke and cinders all the way, and sometimes troubled with the

society of men and women who were less desirable than the smoke and the

cinders. But in Bombay, on almost any kind of wages, she could live in

comfort, and keep her carriage, and have six servants in place of the

woman-of-all-work she had had in her English home. Later, in Calcutta, I

found that the Standard Oil clerks had small one-horse vehicles, and did

no walking; and I was told that the clerks of the other large concerns

there had the like equipment. But to return to Allahabad.