to find the moment of true noon at any time of the year, and
hollowed out of the earth place for two hemispherical cups, cut by belts
of stone, for comparative observations.

He made cups for calculating eclipses, and a mural quadrant and many
other strange things of stone and mortar, of which people hardly know
the names and but very little of the uses. Once, said a man in charge of
two tiny elephants, _Indur_ and _Har_, a Sahib came with the Viceroy,
and spent eight days in the enclosure of the great neglected
observatory, seeing and writing things in a book. But _he_ understood
_Sanskrit_--the Sanskrit upon the faces of the dials, and the meaning of
the gnoma and pointers. Nowadays no one understands Sanskrit--not even
the Pundits; but without doubt Jey Singh was a great man.

The hearer echoed the statement, though he knew nothing of astronomy,
and of all the wonders in the observatory was only struck by the fact
that the shadow of the Prince of Dials moved over its vast plate so
quickly that it seemed as though Time, wroth at the insolence of Jey
Singh, had loosed the Horses of the Sun and were sweeping
everything--dainty Palace-gardens and ruinous instruments--into the
darkness of eternal night. So he went away chased by the shadow on the
dial, and returned to the hotel, where he found men who said--this must
be a catch-word of Globe-trotters--that they were "much pleased at"
Amber. They further thought that "house-rent would be cheap in those
parts," and sniggered over the witticism. There is a class of tourists,
and a strangely large one, who individually never get farther than the
"much pleased" state under any circumstances. This same class of
tourists, it has also been observed, are usually free with hackneyed
puns, vapid phrases, and alleged or bygone jokes. Jey Singh, in spite of
a few discreditable _laches_, was a temperate and tolerant man; but he
would have hanged those Globe-trotters in their trunk-straps as high as
the Yantr Samrat.

Next morning, in the grey dawn, the Englishman rose up and shook the
sand of Jeypore from his feet, and went with Master Coryatt and Sir
Thomas Roe to "Adsmir," wondering whether a year in Jeypore would be
sufficient to exhaust its interest, and why he had not gone out to the
tombs of the dead Kings and the passes of Gulta and the fort of Motee
Dungri. But what he wondered at most--knowing how many men who have in
any way been connected with the birth of an institution,