had the rare opportunity of seeing "the mango trick"
performed by an expert juggler. He first showed us a jar, filled with
innocent sand, so dry that it fell easily through his fingers as he
lifted a handful. Then he presented a dry mango seed, which he planted
in the sand and watered. The jar was placed on the stone pavement of the
hotel, not ten feet away from our eyes. He covered the jar with a little
tent not two feet in diameter. After a few passes of the hand, the tent
was lifted. The seed had already sprouted, and had become a twig with
leaves. Covering the plant once more, he called our attention to a
cobra-charmer, who played harmlessly with a hooded and venomous snake.
At last he threw the tent wholly aside, and there stood a fully
developed little mango tree, perhaps two feet high. It seemed impossible
that the folds of the tent, which had been shaken out at the beginning,
could possibly have held it. The juggler's method was simplicity itself.
If I had not previously seen in America a necromancer cut his wife's
head off, and then put it on again so slick that she seemed to have
received no injury, I might have begun to believe that this Indian
juggler had supernatural powers.

To Lucknow succeeded Agra. The great wonder and prize of Agra is, of
course, the Taj Mahal. So we made our way to it before sunrise, and saw
its exquisite columns and its white minarets in the rosy light of the
earliest morning; then again, as the sun was setting, we saw its last
rays fall upon the snow-white dome. As one looks upon the Taj from the
noble gateway through which one enters the enclosing park, he sees also
its reflection in the long lines of water that lie between, and it seems
a miracle of beauty. But when you reach the edifice itself, and perceive
that its simplicity is combined with lavish richness of decoration,
marble and precious stones being so woven together that they form one
gorgeous and splendid whole, you can only admire the affection that
planned this memorial to a beloved wife, and the art which has succeeded
in constructing an edifice which, after six centuries, is still
recognized as a wonder of the world. Yet the Moslem emperor who built it
was deposed by his son, and then imprisoned not far away, the chief
solace and recreation granted him being this, that from his prison-roof
he could look out upon the Taj Mahal.

The Pearl Mosque and the Jasmine Tower, the Courts of Public and of
Private Audience, in