about
Bombay, its people, and their ways, that a guide book would feel very
dry reading.

By the afternoon we have received I think five invitations on yellow
cards to various royal functions! Now indeed we are in the marvellous
East, in the land to which Scot and Irish should travel to see their
prince or king. So you, my dear friends, artists and professional men,
who have chosen to live as I have done, in or near the capital of your
native land, and whose most thrilling pageant in the whole year is the
line of our worthy bailies and the provost in hired coaches going up the
High Street to open a meeting of ministers, if you would experience the
feeling that stirred the blood of your ancestors so hotly, the feeling
of personal loyalty to prince or king, the sense that is becoming as
dormant as the muscles behind our ears, all you have to do is to leave
your native shores and your professional duties, and home ties, and
travel to some outlying part of the Empire; say to Bombay--there and
back will cost you about _L_200 by P. & O., but you will realise then
that the old nerves may still vibrate. You, my friends, who can't
afford this luxury, you must just stay at home and be as loyal as you
can under the circumstances, and try not to think of our departed
glories, and Home Rule, or Separation--and you can read, about these
yellow tickets to royal shows and such far off things, in traveller's
tales.

The first of these functions was the laying of the foundation of a
museum of science and art; it sounds prosaic, but it was a pageant of
pageantry and pucca tomasha too; the greater part, I daresay, just the
ordinary gorgeousness of this country, fevered with stirring loyalty.
The ceremony was in the centre of an open space of grass, surrounded by
town buildings of half Oriental and half Western design, and blocks of
private flats, each flat with a deep verandah and all bedecked with
flags, and gay figures on the roofs and in the verandahs. In the centre
of the grass were shears with a stone hanging from them on block and
tackle. To our left was a raised dais with red and yellow striped tent
roof supported on pillars topped with spears and flags and the three
golden feathers of the Prince of Wales. In front of the circle of chairs
opposite this and to our right sat the Indian princes; they had rather
handsome brown faces and fat figures, and wore coats of delicate silks
and satins, patent leather shoes and loose socks, big