When we reached the foot of the cone, we found we had been only twenty minutes coming down, although it took us an hour and a half to go up. No sooner had we arrived at the Observatory than we were surrounded by crowds of ragged, beggarly looking men and boys, who insisted on blacking our shoes, or pretended they had been guides, and tried to make us pay them for things they had never done at all. We ordered them away, but they kept on tormenting us, so we jumped into the carriage, and drove off as fast as we could, leaving them all behind, shouting, screaming, and wildly gesticulating.
Since I was there they have built a railroad up the mountain, but I should not think it would be half so much fun to go up in the cars.
A LETTER FROM INDIA.
Lucknow, India, June 20, 1880.
My Dear Friends,—My auntie has sent me several copies of Harper's Young People, and I thought maybe you would like to know a little how we children in India live. I don't know anything about your life except what I read, and my mamma tells me, because I was born here. I am nine years old, and in a little while we are going home. I say home because mamma and papa do, but the only home I know is here, where it is so hot sometimes it seems as if I should die. Last night mamma had to get up and take a towel as wet as it could be, and rub my sheets with it, before I could get to sleep at all, and if the punka stops a single minute, it wakes me right up again. I read my letter to mamma so far, and she says you won't know what a punka is. That is funny to me; but I will tell you. They are very stiff cloth things fixed on frames, and fastened to the ceiling so that they move, and by fanning the air keep a breeze in the room all the time. There are holes in the wall, and ropes put through the holes, and a man outside on the veranda pulls the ropes, and keeps the punka moving. One night I was so hot I got up and went out on the veranda, but the boards of the step burned my feet; so I slipped on my slippers, and tried again. There sat the punka wala nodding, fast asleep, but keeping his arms moving all the time. It looked funny, I can tell you.
We have good times in the winter, though. Christmas-day we always have a picnic. The children of the native Sunday-schools and English schools join together, and have a good time in some grove. And all through the winter we play out under the trees, just as mamma says you do in the summer. But here in summer we can only go out very late in the afternoon or very early in the morning, because if the mid-day sun touches us, it will make us very sick, and perhaps we will die. Theo Carter, a girl I know, when she was real little got away from her nurse, and ran out in the sun without her hat. It was in the morning, too; and now every time she gets warm or tired she has the most dreadful headache, and mamma says she don't believe she will ever be strong, even if she goes to America. But I guess she would, because everybody that gets sick here goes to America, else England, and when they come back they are ever so much better; but sometimes they don't come back, and mamma says people die even in America.
There are lots of thieves in this country. One night last week they got into our house. The servants would keep shutting the bath-room window—the bath-room is between mamma's room and mine—and we wanted it open for air, and mamma told them so; but they said the thieves would climb in from a fig-tree near by. But mamma said if they did, they would be welcome to all they could get. They did get in, and took the clothes Bertie and I had worn through the day. Baby woke, and they were probably frightened, and snatched the first thing they could, which was a box of homœopathic medicine mamma brought from home. We laughed in the morning, because they thought, no doubt, it was something valuable, and it will be worse than nothing to them; but papa says we will cry when we are sick, and have to take bitter medicine instead of little sugar pills.
Last week there was a big procession—something about the government—and one of papa's friends asked us to go to see it, and ride on an elephant. I was real glad, for I never rode on one but once, and then I was so little I don't remember much about it. We had a nice ride. Papa had one elephant to himself, but mamma and I and Mrs. Carter and Theo rode on another. We could see into the up-stairs rooms of people's houses, and it was a delightful view we had of the procession. We had a real good time until our elephant became frightened at a loud noise they called music, and trumpeted dreadful loud. We wanted to get off, but our elephant wouldn't kneel, and the man couldn't make him. Papa came, but mamma said if we tried to get off 'twould only frighten him more. I was real scared, and ready to cry; but mamma took hold of my hand, and spoke just as pleasant as if we were at home, and I didn't think till afterward how white she looked, nor about that man whose elephant ran away with him last winter and killed him; but I guess mamma remembered all the time, for pretty soon the noise passed by, and the men were able to quiet the elephant, so he kneeled, and let papa help us down. And when he took mamma, she fainted, and everybody said it was the fright; but I didn't know she was frightened a bit. I must stop now, because the Home Mail is going very soon; but if you like this, some time I will write you again.
Jennie Anderson.