goods and cast-iron sword-blades at double the Broadway prices.
At another shop of archaic weapons that had but yesterday come from the foundry, we bought an elephant-goad for peace and sociability's sake, and sat for an hour to watch the panorama of the main street. The bearded proprietor bubbled away at his hooka and pointed out the Jeypore celebrities as they went by—the prime minister, the chief magistrate, the political resident,—even the treasurer going in state, with an artillery escort, to pay visits. A group of Brahmans bringing sacred Ganges water from Benares had military escort, too, and a military band; and there was an air of religious state to all the great ekkas drawn by noble white bullocks, the kincob curtains but half concealing the rainbow-wrapped women within. Noble graybeards pranced by on Arab horses, and five wedding processions, with jeweled nautch-girls in gold-gauze dresses, passed before us, the wise old elephants looking very bored with all this fuss and folderol over the marriage of small boys. A customer came and bought some big brasses; a minion ran off and found a dilapidated box for a few annas, and they patched and mended it on the spot. Then the proprietor swept a glance over the crowded thoroughfare and let forth wails like a muezzin on a minaret. A woman, bent under a great bundle of forage, stepped aside, dropped her small haystack on the shelf-like floor of the shop, and the packer's material was bought from her, a simple, direct, and primitive proceeding that delighted me.
