guide, condescendingly; and certainly no people in the world have more need to implore divine aid than these Indian widows, accursed things who, as they themselves and all others believe, have brought the calamity of death upon their husbands.
And then there were the fakirs; the real things of one's Sunday-school books, ragged, unkempt, ash-smeared objects that seemed hardly human, sitting rigid in their insane, consequential sanctity. Some were so utterly absurd and ridiculous with their fantastic ash powderings, that the young American boy on our boat vented peal after peal of laughter that continued to tears as one ash-heap, crouched like Humpty Dumpty on a sunny wall, mouthed and gibbered back at him spitefully. There were lean old fakirs, mere wrinkles of skin laid loosely over some bones, and strapping young fakirs, whom the police should move on or put to road-making. One able-bodied specimen of lazy holiness sat with clenched hand and uplifted arm, wearing the most consciously self-righteous air; another posed like a dirty salt image on a broken stone pedestal at a corner of the ghat; and a row of toothless old relics sat in their dirt and ashes waiting for certain Brahman princes to come along, as in a stage tableau, and distribute daily alms of rice—"to acquire merit." Each whining, mumbling old fakir held out his hands, his begging-bowl, or a dirty end of rag drapery, the almoner doled out a few spoonfuls of cheap rice, and the rich man moved on to a chorus of blessings, conspicuously well pleased with himself and the increased assets of acquired merit—precisely the
