a few Western-educated Indians who have learnt business habits ever think of “catching” a train.  So the Indian railway station has a constant and generally dense floating population that squat in the day-time in separate groups, men, women, and children together, according to their caste, hugging the slender bundles which constitute their luggage, chattering and arguing, shouting and quarrelling, as their mood may be, but on the whole wonderfully good-humoured and patient.  At night they stretch themselves out full length on the ground, drawing their scanty garments well over their heads and leaving their legs and feet exposed, or, if the air is chilly and they possess a blanket, rolling themselves up in it tightly like so many shrouded corpses in long and serried rows, till the shriek of an incoming train arouses them.  Then, whether it be their train or not, there is a din of yelling voices, a frenzied rush up and down the platform, and, even before those who want to get out have had time to alight, a headlong scramble for places—­as often as not in the wrong carriages and always apparently in those that are already crammed full, as the Indian is essentially gregarious—­and out again with fearful shouts and shrill cries if a bundle has gone astray, or an agitated mother has mislaid her child, or a traveller discovers at the last moment that it is not after all the train he wants.  In nine cases out of ten there is really no need for such frantic hurry.  Even express trains take their time about it whenever they do stop, and ordinary trains have a reputation for slowness and unpunctuality to which they seldom fail to live up.  But, as if to make up for the long hours of patient waiting, the struggling and the shouting go on crescendo till the train is at last under way again.  For, besides the actual passengers coming and going, the platforms are alive with hawkers of all sorts who minister to their clamorous needs—­sellers of newspapers and of cigarettes and of the betel-nut which dyes the chewer’s mouth red, of sweetmeats and refreshments suited to the different castes and creeds, Mahomedan water-carriers from whom alone their co-religionists will take water to fill their drinking-vessels, and Brahman water-carriers who can in like manner alone pour out water for Hindus of all castes.  And all have their own peculiar cries, discordant but insistent.

Who that has passed at night through one of the great junctions on the Upper Indian railways, say Saharampur or Umballa or Delhi, can ever forget such sounds and sights of pandemonium?  Or who would care to miss during the daylight hours the open window on to the kaleidoscopic scenes of Indian life at every halt?  Here a turbaned Rajput chief with his whiskers fiercely twirled back under his ears descends from the train to be greeted and garlanded by a throng of expectant retainers who look as if they had stepped straight out of an old Moghul picture.  Or a fat and prosperous Mahomedan zemindar in a gold-embroidered velvet