Then there came a great day when this illusion was
more pronounced than ever. A rich Hindoo had
been spending a fortune upon the manufacture of a
crowd of idols and accompanying paraphernalia whose
purpose was to illustrate scenes in the life of his
especial god or saint, and this fine show was to be
brought through the town in processional state at ten
in the morning. As we passed through the great
public pleasure garden on our way to the city we found
it crowded with natives. That was one sight.
Then there was another. In the midst of the
spacious lawns stands the palace which contains the
museum—a beautiful construction of stone
which shows arched colonnades, one above another, and
receding, terrace-fashion, toward the sky. Every
one of these terraces, all the way to the top one,
was packed and jammed with natives. One must
try to imagine those solid masses of splendid color,
one above another, up and up, against the blue sky,
and the Indian sun turning them all to beds of fire
and flame.
Later, when we reached the city, and glanced down
the chief avenue, smouldering in its crushed-strawberry
tint, those splendid effects were repeated; for every
balcony, and every fanciful bird-cage of a snuggery
countersunk in the house-fronts, and all the long lines
of roofs were crowded with people, and each crowd
was an explosion of brilliant color.
Then the wide street itself, away down and down and
down into the distance, was alive with gorgeously-clothed
people not still, but moving, swaying, drifting, eddying,
a delirious display of all colors and all shades of
color, delicate, lovely, pale, soft, strong, stunning,
vivid, brilliant, a sort of storm of sweetpea blossoms
passing on the wings of a hurricane; and presently,
through this storm of color, came swaying and swinging
the majestic elephants, clothed in their Sunday best
of gaudinesses, and the long procession of fanciful
trucks freighted with their groups of curious and
costly images, and then the long rearguard of stately
camels, with their picturesque riders.
For color, and picturesqueness, and novelty, and outlandishness,
and sustained interest and fascination, it was the
most satisfying show I had ever seen, and I suppose
I shall not have the privilege of looking upon its
like again.
CHAPTER LXI.
In the first place God made idiots. This was
for practice. Then He made
School Boards.
—Pudd’nhead
Wilson’s New Calendar.
Suppose we applied no more ingenuity to the instruction
of deaf and dumb and blind children than we sometimes
apply in our American public schools to the instruction
of children who are in possession of all their faculties?
The result would be that the deaf and dumb and blind
would acquire nothing. They would live and die
as ignorant as bricks and stones. The methods
used in the asylums are rational. The teacher
Copyrights
Following the Equator from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
