VIII.
THE CANVAS CITY.
YOU people away in the radiant South perhaps picture us engrossed in the preparations for the Durbar, talking of nothing but elephants and armies and the Great Ones of the Land. If you do, you are wrong. The Durbar is only a mere incident which has brought us all together, a fortuitous collection of chilly atoms of humanity, in the middle of a dusty plain; but what actually absorbs our attention is the problem of warming our canvas abodes when the cold sweeps in with a rush at sunset. If you are a real bigwig—and every other man you meet here is a bigwig of sorts—you have a large double-pole tent with a fire-place made of white-washed mud. It is sometimes an advantage not to be a bigwig, and in the matter of fire-places there are certainly points in favour of decent obscurity. The square chimney outside the larger tents gives an earnest of cosiness within, which is not always realised in the event. You modestly approach the dwelling of greatness, and as you peer within the portals you discern the physical embodiment of such limited fame as India can confer, looming, impressive but only vaguely defined, in the midst of dense clouds of acrid smoke.
