Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/272

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250
WINTER INDIA

usual animals of the "lion and tiger museum," where the most remarkable sight was a monkey holding a looking-glass that it might see to pick its teeth and prick its throat with a dangerous-looking darning-needle. We hastened back to the native city, and from the time we left the "Europe shops" and the avenue of trees with shabby tram-cars jingling by and penetrated the city gate, we moved in an ideal East, an Arabian Nights' revel of Mohammedan picturesqueness. The half-mile bazaar between Vazir Khan's and the Golden Mosque is the heart of Lahore, all the people and trades of the Panjab being exhibited there. In that narrow lane between the balconied houses, where every window flaunted some flaming turban or shawl, and each alcove shop was set for theatrical effect and overflowed to the street, there moved the same brilliantly costumed company of the morning. All picturesqueness and color centered in greatest intensity at the gateway of the Vazir Khan Mosque, single figures and groups in tableaux tempting the kodak, until we feared we should have no more film left after Lahore. Before that glorious portal, its facade a dream of soft old Persian tiles, there congregated barbers, beggars, peddlers, money-changers, letter-writers, and smithies, prostrate bullocks, venders of fat-tailed sheep, donkeys loaded with vegetables, hawkers, idlers, and busy people of every kind. "Remove thy heart from the gardens of the world, and know that this building is the true abode of man," is written in slender letters on the blue and green Persian tiles of the mosque front; and