eat, which
seems to be hawked from door to door. There is a Raja who owns or has an
interest in the land on which the station stands, and he is averse to
cow-killing. For these reasons, Jamalpur is not too well supplied with
good meat, and what it wants is a decent meat-market with cleanly
controlled slaughtering arrangements. The "Company," who gives grants to
the schools and builds the institute and throws the shadow of its
protection all over the place, might help this scheme forward.

The heart of Jamalpur is the "shops," and here a visitor will see more
things in an hour than he can understand in a year. Steam Street very
appropriately leads to the forty or fifty acres that the "shops" cover,
and to the busy silence of the loco. superintendent's office, where, a
man must put down his name and his business on a slip of paper before he
can penetrate into the Temple of Vulcan. About three thousand five
hundred men are in the "shops," and, ten minutes after the day's work
has begun, the assistant superintendent knows exactly how many are "in."
The heads of departments--silent, heavy-handed men, captains of five
hundred or more--have their names fairly printed on a board which is
exactly like a pool-marker. They "star a life" when they come in, and
their few names alone represent salaries to the extent of six thousand a
month. They are men worth hearing deferentially. They hail from
Manchester and the Clyde, and the great ironworks of the North: pleasant
as cold water in a thirsty land is it to hear again the full
Northumbrian burr or the long-drawn Yorkshire "aye." Under their great
gravity of demeanour--a man who is in charge of a few lakhs' worth of
plant cannot afford to be riotously mirthful--lurks melody and humour.
They can sing like north-countrymen, and in their hours of ease go back
to the speech of the Iron countries they have left behind, when "Ab o'
th' yate" and all "Ben Briarly's" shrewd wit shakes the warm air of
Bengal with deep-chested laughter. Hear "Ruglan' Toon," with a chorus as
true as the fall of trip-hammers, and fancy that you are back again in
the smoky, rattling, ringing North!

But this is the "unofficial" side. Go forward through the gates under
the mango trees, and set foot at once in sheds which have as little to
do with mangoes as a locomotive with Lakshmi. The "buzzer" howls, for it
is nearly tiffin time. There is a rush from every quarter of the shops,
a cloud of flying natives, and a