being spoiled by a shower or a squall was
avoided, also all spectacular effect. Perhaps it is idiocyncrasy, but I
can't help feeling that the crucial point of the Prince's tour was his
landing on his foreign possessions, say at Bombay or Rangoon; that the
landing should have been made magnificent and historic. Here was an
opportunity just such as there was at Bombay; all the material at hand
for a splendid spectacle, light, water, sky, ships, masts, boats,
wharfs, the most beautifully dressed crowds and people of every
nationality for background. A fraction of fancy was all that was
necessary to have set up the most magnificient composition,--something
to go down in the history of the country. But the Prince and Princess
were ushered through the canvas alley-way into a dim tent, full of damp
exhausted air, hired American chairs, and people in stiff Western
clothes, and sat on two high-backed chairs with their backs to the
little light and listened to speeches. It was a Royal pageant arranged
as we do these things at home by men of T square and double entry,
energy and goodwill. What is needed for such shows, in the first place,
is a knowledge of historical precedents, and imagination, then
organisation and reckless regard for weather, with say an artist, a
historian, a general, and a cashier, for working Committee.

There was a beautiful thing in the reception Shamiana, but you had to
have your eye lifting to note it. As you entered this tent from the town
side, there were on either side three tiers of Burmese ladies sitting
one above the other, their faces becomingly powdered with yellowish
powder, and their eyebrows strongly pencilled, and they each had a
yellow orchid in their black hair, and their dresses were of silks of
infinite variety of tint--primrose, rose, and delicate white--"soft as
puff, and puff, of grated orris root" and they glittered with diamonds
and emeralds, and each held a silver bowl marvellously embossed, filled
with petals of flowers and gold leaf. Their attitudes were studied to
their finger tips, and as the Prince and Princess went out they stood
and dropped a shower of petals before them.

The arrangements for the procession through the streets were perfect,
and the crowds in the streets were great! and best of all were the
groups of Burmese country people coming in to town in their bullock
carts, the rough dry wood of the wheels and arched sun-bitten covers in
such contrast to the family p