there is a faint peep of a broad river bed, more fortifications loom before you, and you alight in another great station a few minutes before one. The first feeling is one of intense surprise. Where are the mountains of luggage, the pyramids of packages piled from floor to ceiling, the babel and the inextricable confusion, of which you have read so much? The platform is as clear as a billiard table, and only a few porters are visible. The parcel office contains just the ordinary collection of boxes and bundles neatly packed on racks, but with ample room for more. Upon a table is a huddled heap covered by a blanket. You lift the blanket, and reveal a solitary clerk, who may be sleeping the sleep of the overworked, but does not look it. You see your baggage packed upon a tonga, and are driving along the roads of Imperial Delhi in a few minutes. There is no noise, no confusion, and certainly no visible muddle. So far as that placid and orderly station was concerned, there might have been no Durbar toward at all. I write of things as I found them. Yet honest gentlemen, whose word may be relied on, assure me that a few hours before I arrived, the station was still in the appalling condition described with strict accuracy in your columns last Monday.*[1] And there is a clue to the marvellous transformation. It is said that Some One sent a Telegram; and then, in the mysterious way things happen in India, the
- ↑ * The station again relapsed into confusion a day or two afterwards, and remained in a muddle until the middle of January.
