We wandered contentedly around here and there in India; to Lahore, among other places, where the Lieutenant-Governor lent me an elephant.  This hospitality stands out in my experiences in a stately isolation.  It was a fine elephant, affable, gentlemanly, educated, and I was not afraid of it.  I even rode it with confidence through the crowded lanes of the native city, where it scared all the horses out of their senses, and where children were always just escaping its feet.  It took the middle of the road in a fine independent way, and left it to the world to get out of the way or take the consequences.  I am used to being afraid of collisions when I ride or drive, but when one is on top of an elephant that feeling is absent.  I could have ridden in comfort through a regiment of runaway teams.  I could easily learn to prefer an elephant to any other vehicle, partly because of that immunity from collisions, and partly because of the fine view one has from up there, and partly because of the dignity one feels in that high place, and partly because one can look in at the windows and see what is going on privately among the family.  The Lahore horses were used to elephants, but they were rapturously afraid of them just the same.  It seemed curious.  Perhaps the better they know the elephant the more they respect him in that peculiar way.  In our own case—­we are not afraid of dynamite till we get acquainted with it.

We drifted as far as Rawal Pindi, away up on the Afghan frontier—­I think it was the Afghan frontier, but it may have been Hertzegovina—­it was around there somewhere—­and down again to Delhi, to see the ancient architectural wonders there and in Old Delhi and not describe them, and also to see the scene of the illustrious assault, in the Mutiny days, when the British carried Delhi by storm, one of the marvels of history for impudent daring and immortal valor.

We had a refreshing rest, there in Delhi, in a great old mansion which possessed historical interest.  It was built by a rich Englishman who had become orientalized—­so much so that he had a zenana.  But he was a broadminded man, and remained so.  To please his harem he built a mosque; to please himself he built an English church.  That kind of a man will arrive, somewhere.  In the Mutiny days the mansion was the British general’s headquarters.  It stands in a great garden—­oriental fashion —­and about it are many noble trees.  The trees harbor monkeys; and they are monkeys of a watchful and enterprising sort, and not much troubled with fear.  They invade the house whenever they get a chance, and carry off everything they don’t want.  One morning the master of the house was in his bath, and the window was open.  Near it stood a pot of yellow paint and a brush.  Some monkeys appeared in the window; to scare them away, the gentleman threw his sponge at them.  They did not scare at all; they jumped into the room and threw yellow paint all over him from the brush, and drove him out; then they painted the walls and the floor and the tank and the windows and the furniture yellow, and were in the dressing-room painting that when help arrived and routed them.