suggestion of new life to replace the dead, for the brides so often are
infants.

One of the differences between the poor of London and the poor of India
may be noticed here. In the East-End a funeral is considered to be a
failure unless its cost is out of all proportion to the survivors'
means, while a wedding is a matter of a few shillings; whereas in India
a funeral is a simple ceremony, to be hurried over, while the wedding
festivities last for weeks and often plunge the family into debts from
which they never recover.




THE GARLANDS


The selective processes of the memory are very curious. It has been
decreed that one of my most vivid recollections of Bombay should be that
of the embarrassment and half-amused self-consciousness of an American
business man on the platform of the railway station for Delhi. Having
completed his negotiatory visit he was being speeded on his way by the
native staff of the firm, who had hung him with garlands like a
sacrificial bull. In the Crawford Market I had watched the florists at
work tearing the blossoms from a kind of frangipani known as the Temple
Flower, in order to string them tightly into chains; and now and again
in the streets one came upon people wearing them; but to find a shrewd
and portly commercial American thus bedecked was a shock. As it
happened, he was to share my compartment, and on entering, just before
the train started, he apologised very heartily for importing so much