time

to an impressive close. The vendor of Delhi jewellery will be there and
the Sind-work-box-walla,
with his small, compressed
white turban
and spotless robes,
and the Cashmere shawl merchant and many more, pressing on the

gentleman's notice for the last time their most tempting
wares and preparing for the long bout of fence which will decide at what
point between "asking price" and "selling price" each article shall
change ownership. The distance between these two points is wide and
variable, depending upon the indications of wealth about the purchaser's
person and the indications of innocence about his countenance. And when
the poor globe-trotter, who has long since spent more money than he ever
meant to spend, and loaded himself with things which he
could have got cheaper in London or New York, tries to shake off his
tormentors by getting up and leaning over the balcony rails, the shrill
voice of the snake-charmer
will assail him from below, promising him, in a torrent of sonorous
Hindustanee, variegated with pigeon English and illuminated with wild
gesticulations, such a superfine _tamasha_ as it never was
the fortune of the _sahib_ to witness before. _Tamasha_ is one of those
Indian words, like _bundobust_, for which there is no equivalent in the
English language, and which are at once so comprehensive and so
expressive
that, when once the
use of them has been acquired, they become indispensable, so that they
have gained a permanent place in the Anglo-Indian's vocabulary. It
is not slang, but a good word of ancient origin. Hobson-Jobson quotes
a curious Latin writer on the Empire of the Grand Mogul, who use