reserved. Remembering the bath-tubs, the grilled bones, and the legend on the dining-room walls of the parent establishment, we had small expectation of anything sybaritic at the offshoot hostelry. Yet we were rewarded with a great mansion, in a garden that was almost a park; the house was clean and admirably kept by a black, black butler, twin to the end-man of the old minstrel shows.
We drove miles and miles through tree-lined streets to the water-front of the city to find the post, telegraph, and steamship offices and the bank. All Madras and all southern India, planters from Bangalur and the Nilgiri Hills, and officials from everywhere, were doing their Christmas shopping those days, the races were on, and the streets and bazaars were full of life and animation. We drove into beautiful grounds and around under a great portico of a mansion to find the chemist's shop; into another splendid place to find, not the lord chief justice, but the grocer; and this extravagance of space makes Madras a city of frightfully magnificent distances.
The burnt-cork butler welcomed us home to our residential hotel, himself brought the dainty tea-tray to the marble-floored portico, and stood by with ear-to-ear smiles, watching us enjoy his crisp toast and fresh seed-cakes. We began to have a Christmas feeling of peace and good will to all Madras. The loggia was so attractive that we ordered dinner to be served there, rather than dress and dine with any more self-supplying guests, as at that "best hotel in India." The butler assented joyfully, a whole minstrel troupe ran in with bouquets, fruit pyramids,
