Eden Gardens, which are
supposed by the uninitiated of the mofussil to represent the gilded
luxury of the metropolis. As a matter of fact they are hideously dull.
The inhabitants appear in top-hats and frock-coats, and walk dolorously
to and fro under the glare of jerking electric lamps, when they ought to
be sitting in their shirt-sleeves round little tables and treating their
wives to iced lager beer. My friend--it was a muggy March night--wrapped
himself in the prescribed garments and said graciously: "You can wear a
round hat, but you mustn't wear deck-shoes; and for goodness' sake, my
dear fellow, don't smoke on the Red Road--all the people one knows go
there." Most of the people who were people sat in their carriages, in an
atmosphere of hot horse, harness, and panel-lacquer, outside the
gardens, and the remnant tramped up and down, by twos and threes, upon
squashy green grass, until they were wearied, while a band played at
them. "And is this all you do?" I asked. "It is," said my friend. "Isn't
it good enough? We meet every one we know here, and walk with him or
her, unless he or she is among the carriages."

Overhead was a woolly warm sky; underfoot feverish soft grass; and from
all quarters the languorous breeze bore faint reminiscences of stale
sewage upon its wings. Round the horizon were stacked lines of
carriages, and the electric flare bred aches in the strained eyebrow. It
was a strange sight and fascinating. The doomed creatures walked up and
down without cessation, for when one fled away into the lamp-spangled
gloom twenty came to take his place. Slop-hatted members of the
mercantile marine, Armenian merchants, Bengal civilians, shop-girls and
shop-men, Jews, Parthians, and Mesopotamians, were all there in the
tepid heat and the fetid smell.

"This," said my friend, "is how we enjoy ourselves. There are the
Viceregal liveries. Lady Lansdowne comes here." He spoke as though
reading to me the Government House list of Paradise. I reflected that
these people would continue to walk up and down until they died,
drinkless, dusty, sad, and blanched.

In saying this last thing I had made a mistake. Calcutta is no more
Anglo-Indian than West Brompton. In common with Bombay, it has achieved
a mental attitude several decades in advance of that of the raw and
brutal India of fact. An intelligent and responsible financier,
discussing the Empire, said: "But why do we want so large an army in
India? Look at the co