Chapter 50

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that
wears a fig-leaf.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The journey to Benares was all in daylight, and occupied but a few hours.
It was admirably dusty. The dust settled upon you in a thick ashy layer
and turned you into a fakeer, with nothing lacking to the role but the
cow manure and the sense of holiness. There was a change of cars about
mid-afternoon at Moghul-serai--if that was the name--and a wait of two
hours there for the Benares train. We could have found a carriage and
driven to the sacred city, but we should have lost the wait. In other
countries a long wait at a station is a dull thing and tedious, but one
has no right to have that feeling in India. You have the monster crowd
of bejeweled natives, the stir, the bustle, the confusion, the shifting
splendors of the costumes--dear me, the delight of it, the charm of it
are beyond speech. The two-hour wait was over too soon. Among other
satisfying things to look at was a minor native prince from the backwoods
somewhere, with his guard of honor, a ragged but wonderfully gaudy gang
of fifty dark barbarians armed with rusty flint-lock muskets. The
general show came so near to exhausting variety that one would have said
that no addition to it could be conspicuous, but when this Falstaff and
his motleys marched through it one saw that that seeming impossibility
had happened.

We got away by and by, and soon reached the outer edge of Benares; then
there was another wait; but, as usual, with something to look at. This
was a cluster of little canvas-boxes--palanquins. A canvas-box is not much
of a sight--when empty; but when there is a lady in it, it is an object
of interest. These boxes were grouped apart, in the full blaze of the
terrible sun during the three-quarters of an hour that we tarried there.
They contained zenana ladies. They had to sit up; there was not room
enough to stretch out. They probably did not mind it. They are used to
the close captivity of the dwellings all their lives; when they go a
journey they are carried to the train in these boxes; in the train they
have to be secluded from inspection. Many people pity them, and I always
did it myself and never charged anything; but it is doubtful if this
compassion is valued. While we were in India some good-hearted Europeans
in one of the cities proposed to restrict a large park to the use of
zenana ladies, so that they could go there and in assured privacy go
about unveiled and enjoy the sunshine and air as they had never enjoyed
them before. The good intentions back of the proposition were
recognized, and sincere thanks returned for it, but the proposition
itself met with a prompt declination at the hands of those