band compliments the United
States by playing "Hiawatha" or one of Sousa's compositions.

It is compensating to a person burdened with the habit of wondering
where words come from, to discover that Dum-dum is a suburb of Calcutta,
and is important as a military post and as the seat of an ammunition
factory and arsenal.

[Illustration: SHIPPING ON THE HOOGHLY, CALCUTTA]

The sights of Calcutta are unimportant. The general post-office occupies
the site of the native prison whose horrors of the Black Hole stain
chapters of Indian history; and a description of the burning of human
bodies on the bank of the Hooghly, and of the animal sacrifices at the
old Hindu temple at Khali-ghat, would be disagreeably gruesome. The
gaudy Jain temple interests for a few minutes, and the exterior of Fort
William impresses the casual spectator. The zooelogical garden is
conventional, and the feature of the botanical garden is probably the
largest banyan tree in the world. Calcutta hotels, deplorably poor, have
been fitly described as of two kinds--bad and adjectively bad. All that
interests the visitor within the modern capital of ancient India is the
movement of official and social life, and the parade of races forming
the population of the marvelous, mysterious country.

There, across the esplanade, with imposing gates and approaches, is
Government House, winter seat of the Viceroy of India--whose most
distinguished incumbent in recent years was His Excellency the Right
Honorable the Baron Curzon of Kedleston, P. C., G. M. S. I., G. M. I.
E., etc., etc. Few traveling Americans had the time to speak of him in a
manner honoring all these designations. Visitors from Chicago used to
refer to him, it was claimed, with naive simplicity as "Mary Leiter's
husband," and let it go at that. A person of extraordinary ability was
this husband of an American queen, and it is generally believed that he
may some day be prime minister of England. The viceroyship is the
highest appointive office in the world. Its compensation is the
equivalent of $80,000 per annum, but the allowances for entertaining
European functionaries, an army of native servants, and a stableful of
horses and elephants for State ceremonials, swells the amount two or
threefold. Both at Government House in Calcutta and at the summer home
in Simla the viceroy is surrounded by a court equalled in splendor by
few royalties in Europe. Compared with the increment and disbursements
of Indi