not cross Old Court House Street without looking carefully to see
that you stand no chance of being run over. This is beautiful. There is
a steady roar of traffic, cut every two minutes by the deep roll of the
trams. The driving is eccentric, not to say bad, but there is the
traffic--more than unsophisticated eyes have beheld for a certain number
of years. It means business, it means money-making, it means crowded and
hurrying life, and it gets into the blood and makes it move. Here be big
shops with plate-glass fronts--all displaying the well-known names of
firms that we savages only correspond with through the Parcels Post.[14]
They are all here, as large as life, ready to supply anything you need
if you only care to sign. Great is the fascination of being able to
obtain a thing on the spot without having to write for a week and wait
for a month, and then get something quite different. No wonder pretty
ladies, who live anywhere within a reasonable distance, come down to do
their shopping personally.

[14] C.O.D.

"Look here. If you want to be respectable you mustn't smoke in the
streets. Nobody does it." This is advice kindly tendered by a friend in
a black coat. There is no Levee or Lieutenant-Governor in sight; but he
wears the frock-coat because it is daylight, and he can be seen. He
refrains from smoking for the same reason. He admits that Providence
built the open air to be smoked in, but he says that "it isn't the
thing." This man has a brougham, a remarkably natty little pill-box with
a curious wabble about the wheels. He steps into the brougham and puts
on--a top-hat, a shiny black "plug."

There was a man up-country once who owned a top-hat. He leased it to
amateur theatrical companies for some seasons until the nap wore off.
Then he threw it into a tree and wild bees hived in it. Men were wont to
come and look at the hat, in its palmy days, for the sake of feeling
homesick. It interested all the station, and died with two seers of
_babul_-flower honey in its bosom. But top-hats are not intended to be
worn in India. They are as sacred as home letters and old rosebuds. The
friend cannot see this. He allows that if he stepped out of his brougham
and walked about in the sunshine for ten minutes he would get a bad
headache. In half-an-hour he would probably die of sunstroke. He allows
all this, but he keeps to his Hat and cannot see why a barbarian is
moved to inextinguishable laughter at the sight. Every one w