he shriek of an
incoming train arouses them. Then, whether it be their train or not,
there is a din of yelling voices, a frenzied rush up and down the
platform, and, even before those who want to get out have had time to
alight, a headlong scramble for places--as often as not in the wrong
carriages and always apparently in those that are already crammed full,
as the Indian is essentially gregarious--and out again with fearful
shouts and shrill cries if a bundle has gone astray, or an agitated
mother has mislaid her child, or a traveller discovers at the last
moment that it is not after all the train he wants. In nine cases out of
ten there is really no need for such frantic hurry. Even express trains
take their time about it whenever they do stop, and ordinary trains have
a reputation for slowness and unpunctuality to which they seldom fail to
live up. But, as if to make up for the long hours of patient waiting,
the struggling and the shouting go on _crescendo_ till the train is at
last under way again. For, besides the actual passengers coming and
going, the platforms are alive with hawkers of all sorts who minister to
their clamorous needs--sellers of newspapers and of cigarettes and of
the betel-nut which dyes the chewer's mouth red, of sweetmeats and
refreshments suited to the different castes and creeds, Mahomedan
water-carriers from whom alone their co-religionists will take water to
fill their drinking-vessels, and Brahman water-carriers who can in like
manner alone pour out water for Hindus of all castes. And all have their
own peculiar cries, discordant but insistent.

Who that has passed at night through one of the great junctions on the
Upper Indian railways, say Saharampur or Umballa or Delhi, can ever
forget such sounds and sights of pandemonium? Or who would care to miss
during the daylight hours the open window on to the kaleidoscopic scenes
of Indian life at every halt? Here a turbaned Rajput chief with his
whiskers fiercely twirled back under his ears descends from the train to
be greeted and garlanded by a throng of expectant retainers who look as
if they had stepped straight out of an old Moghul picture. Or a fat and
prosperous Mahomedan _zemindar_ in a gold-embroidered velvet coat and
patent-leather boots struts along the platform convoying his fluttering
household of heavily veiled ladies, all a-twitter with excitement, to
the _purdah_ carriage specially reserved for them. Or a band of
mendicant asc