Useless to protest that we
had desired but one of them to perform: they pursued us into the open,
and even clung to our knees, and of course we paid--afterwards to learn
that one rupee for the lot was a lavish guerdon.
One meets with these divers continually, wherever there is a pool sacred
or otherwise; but some actually leap into the water and do not merely
drop. At the shrine of the Saint Nizam-ud-din, near Humayun's Tomb, I
found them--but there they were healthy-looking youths--and again at
Fatehpur-Sikri. But for this sporadic diving, the wrestling bouts which
are common everywhere, the Nautch and the jugglers, India seems to have
no pastimes.
THE ROPE TRICK
The returning traveller from India is besieged by questioners who want
to know all about the most famous of the jugglers' performances. In this
trick the magician flings a rope into the air, retaining one end in his
hand, and his boy climbs up it and disappears. I did not see it.
AGRA AND FATEHPUR-SIKRI
All the Indian cities that I saw seemed to cover an immense acreage,
partly because every modern house has its garden and compound. In a
country where land is cheap and servants are legion there need be no
congestion, and, so far, the Anglo-Indian knows little or nothing of the
embarrassments of dwellers in New York or London. To every one in India
falls naturally a little faithful company of assistants to oil the
wheels of life--groom, gardener, butler and so forth--and a spacious
dwelling-place to think of England in, and calculate the variable value
of the rupee, and wonder why the dickens So-and-so got his knighthood.
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