A Yankee in the Far East

by George Hoyt Allen

The life of a flying fish may look all right to the unsophisticated, but things are rarely what they seem, and a flying fish's life is a hard lot.

She said: "I wish I were a flying fish, o'er ocean's sparkling waves to sail"

Chased up out of the water to escape the jaws of some horrid sea monster seeking to make a meal off it, it spreads its silvery wings o'er "ocean's sparkling waves," when a seagull comes along, and—good-bye little flying fish.

Now if I'd been one of those little girls playing that wishing game and had known as much as I know now, I'd have wished to be a sacred bull here in Calcutta.

That's one fine job—the life of a Calcutta sacred bull.

I stepped out of my hotel today onto one of Calcutta's best streets, with a pavement twenty feet wide, filled with pedestrians, lined with splendid shops.

Calcutta is a town of one million inhabitants and is the second city in size in the British Empire.

Just at the side of the entrance to a fine jewelry store lay a great big fat and glossy sacred bull, with a garland of roses round his neck, placed there by some devout Hindu.