right and left, on gilded gopuras, the mirror tank, and the staircase of the great hall where the dancers and Brahmans were grouped unconscious. Little Thungama and her adoring peon stood for me; and then Pattu Thacheadar, special protector and personal conductor, impresario, and grand manager of the Brahman troupe, was asked to take the steps, to pose magnificent, all flower-garlanded as he was. He assented with excited delight, the other Brahmans shouted their satisfaction, and with much chaff and back-talk to his Brahman brethren, this splendid creature spread out his flower necklaces and stood, facing the sun, breathing slowly and not winking for seconds after the button was pressed.
The bullock-bandy carried us and our load of floral gifts home to the bangla, and after a quick dinner and long nap carried us on to the station, where Pattu, the Superb, was parading the platform in waiting. He had walked the eight miles to take leave of us, to present more flower garlands and a rare lemon brought from a grove some miles away on the Coromandel coast. He wore classic sandals, or shoes bound by rawhide thongs, and the end of his long white drapery was thrown up over his head and shoulders like an Arab burnoose. He swung a quaint, archaic lantern, and in the flashes of light from the station-rooms he was more paintable and operatic than at the temple. And this son of the Sun, descendant of ten thousand Brahmans, masher of most magnificent order, was posing for effect as unmistakably as others of his kind pose in Western drawing-rooms—the handsome man and his little arts—the same transparency the world over.
