speeches, was there joy? Let me be reporter:—

I was on my way from the Punjaub to
England, and so reached Bombay. Being a
poor Bengalee, with no friends or acquaintances
in the land of ducks, I betook myself
to the Hope Hall Hotel. I had spent
several years in remote districts on the
north-western frontier, and more recently in
the Punjaub. A sandy track really not even
fit for palki-travelling and utterly impassable
for carriages, was all that I had been accustomed
to see in the way of road, and our
track there, bad as it was in itself, used to be
crossed by unbridged nullahs, or sometimes
cut asunder by broad rivers, unfordable, and
equally unsaddled with a bridge. I had seen
no better things on my way through Scinde.
It was, therefore, with a luxurious sense of
enjoyment that, when I had sent on my
baggage to Hope Hall, I took reins between my
fingers, and drove out of the fort in a hired
buggy over the smooth macadamised road. I
admired civilisation. Savage life is not good
for the bones. The buggy really was a
tumble-down affair, dragged about by an
animal that might have served as spare horse
to Don Quixote; but it was very well, and
there was the fine road, and I said to myself
with a thought of lands over the sea, "Now I
begin to get a foretaste of our English
comfort, and of the refinement of an European
capital!"

As I mused, I was dragged in my buggy
to a handsome stone bridge; and, carelessly
turning my head, expecting, as a matter of
course, to see the usual yellow nullah creeping
along at its sluggish cold weather pace,
I was amazed. For what I saw was a dry
gravel bed, a double line of rails, trim
fences: in fact, the Bombay and Calcutta
railway!

Of course, I knew that there had been
talk about railways for India. But Indian
talks are always such abominably long talks
that I have seldom paid much heed to
them. I had, moreover, been much occupied
by my own business, with which no hope of
any railway ever was connected. People
"up country" have long since become tired
of asking or hearing about any such European
curiosity. Calcutta merchants now alive
may come to travel by cheap trains from the
Ditch to Hooghly, but the Punjaubite knows
that he must jog on to the end of his days in
the good old style; that is to say, in a creaking,
leaking, confined crib of a palki; and at
the good old pace.

But having actually seen the railroad, my
up-country faith was strengthened and my
interest revived. I hurried on to Hope Hall,
and began to inquire of every person whom
I encountered, when the line was to be
opened, how far it went, and all about it. I
was astonished—as I had no right to be—
at the ignorance and indifference with which
my inquiries were all met. Nobody knew
anything about it. As it seemed, also, nobody
cared. The opening, some thought, had
taken place already; others believed that
it was fixed for next day—or imagined it
might be next month, or on New Year's
Day, very possibly. Either the listlessness of
Anglo-Indians had not been overstated, or
the Ducks had become quite as much disheartened
as their neighbours at the hopelessly
slow progress made in all such matters.
It appeared certain, however, that twenty-four
miles of rail—from Bombay to Tannah
—were really finished; and, at last, by dint
of much inquiry, I discovered that the
informants who fixed next day for the business
of opening were in the right. At some time
or other in the forenoon, the railway authorities,
accompanied by a party of their
friends, would make their trial trip.

Accordingly, at ten o'clock the next morning,
I took up my station on the bridge. It
was quite deserted; no gathering of Europeans
and natives indicated expectation of
a strange event. I waited patiently, with
my eyes staring abroad over the parapet, until
half-past eleven; and, by that time, my
perseverance in looking out had collected a
small crowd around me. About a hundred
natives setting a sahib wait so pertinaciously,
thought that something must be in the wind,
and being always glad to witness a tomasha,
equally glad of an excuse for sitting still in
placid expectation of no matter what, they
wandered up and down or sat upon the
bridge, talking and laughing, jesting and
smoking after their own manner.

The day was fine, November being one of
the most enjoyable months in the Indian
year; sky cloudless; sun glaring, indeed, but
not intolerable; leafy foliage, white houses;
flowing-robed, brown-skinned, easy-going
natives, all full of the laziness of India, suggestive
of the primitive East, of the land of
dreams and fables.

Suddenly out spoke, in its own harsh and
peremptory way, the unmistakeable Steam
Whistle! The white gates which marked a
stream crossing a little way down the line
were thrown open; and, with a shriek, and a
puff, and a whiz, and a rattle, engine and
train, consisting of four covered waggons,
smoked under our legs. I knew the natives
too well to expect that they would show any
great excitement at the apparition. With a
few ejaculations of "Wah! wah!" they
turned slowly away, and began to disperse.

"Well, what do you think of that?" I
asked of one of them—a fat, well-to-do, and
evidently most conservative Burmeah.

"Too quick, sir—too quick—all be killed."
He had no more to say about it.

The train went on, attaining at one time
a speed of forty miles an hour, screaming and
frightening the birds in the flat quiet meadows,
but not at all alarming or surprising
Hindu men or Hindu cattle. At Tannah the
occupants of the train got out and took tiffin