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WINTER INDIA

house and a temple of cleanliness and order. Naturally we dreamed of American hotels and other high products of our civilization, and happily waked to find the Mussaffirkhana not a dream but luxurious reality. After the chota hazri, as daintily perfect as the little breakfast of a Paris hotel, we drove about the well-kept town in a palace carriage, a perfectly appointed victoria. The streets were lined with white houses, whose tracery windows and ornamental balconies were worthy an art museum. The street crowds were most brilliant, and more yellow was worn in Gwalior than elsewhere, along with the endless variety of Mahratta turbans, which surpass in number and originality those of any other people. The very imposing coachman snapped his whip and the blooded horses sped away like the wind, straight down the middle of each street, the sais yelping shrill warnings, the crowds parting automatically and saluting the palace livery. We saw the beautiful unfinished temple to Sindhia's mother, for which the stone-cutters were chipping out as fine traceries and latticings as any in Delhi or Agra, and then returned for the serious British breakfast, at a table fragrant with roses and mignonette. It was radiant, mild, ideal spring weather, and after all our sufferings from cold we basked with delight in the open air, faring forth again to the foot of the rock-fortress which rises like Gibraltar from the plain. A splendid elephant in red-velvet trappings stood waving its trunk as we drove up, and at the word of command sank upon its hind legs in a deep courtesy, stretched out its great body, slowly bent its fore