ople, be they
illustrious personages or the common herd, who assist in the ceremony,
are puppets a span long, rudely constructed and coarsely painted, but
very faithful as to costume and manners, and most dexterously played
upon by the invisible tamasha-wallahs, whom the curtain conceals.

A silver throne having been wheeled out on the portico by manikin
bhearers, the manikin Rajah, attended by his manikin moonshee, and as
many manikin courtiers as the tamasha property-man can supply, comes
forth in his wooden way, and seats himself on the throne in wooden
state; a manikin _hookah-badar_, or pipe-server, and a manikin
_chattah-wallah_, or umbrella-bearer, take up their wooden position
behind, while a manikin _punkah-wallah_ fans, woodenly, his manikin
Highness, and the manikin courtiers dance wooden attendance around. Then
manikin ladies and gentlemen come on manikin elephants and horses and
camels, or in manikin palanquins, and alight with wooden dignity at the
foot of the palace stairs, taking their respective orders of wooden
precedence with wooden pomposities and humilities, and all the manikin
forms of the customary bore. The manikin courtiers trip woodenly
down the grand stairs to meet the manikin guests with little wooden
Orientalisms of compliment, and all the little wooden delicacies of
the season; and they conduct the manikin Sahibs and Beebees into
the presence of the manikin Rajah, who receives them with wooden
condescension and affability, and graciously reciprocates their wooden
salaams, inquiring woodenly into the health of all their manikin
friends, and hoping, with the utmost ligneous solicitude, that they have
had a pleasant wooden journey: and so on, manikin by manikin, to the
wooden end. Of course, much desultory tomtomry and wild troubadouring
behind the curtain make the occasion musical.

The audience is complete in all the picturesqueness of mixed baba-logue.
In the front row, chattering brown ayahs, gay with red sarees and
nose-rings, sit on the floor, holding in their laps pale, tender
babies, fair-haired and blue-eyed, lace-swaddled, coral-clasped, and
amber-studded. Behind these, on high chairs, are the striplings of three
years and upward, vociferous and kicking under the hand-punkahs of
their patient bhearers. Tall fellows are these bhearers, with fierce
moustaches, but gentle eyes,--a sort of nursery lions whom a little
child can lead. On each side are small chocolate-colored heathens, in