the Viceroy's staff, six of them, huge beasts surrounded by chobdars, who marched solemnly, maces in hand, on every side of them. But they needed none such to control them. Passively, submissively, they lumbered on, solemn with all the dignity of the East, typical of the huge forces that had bowed themselves at last to the law and order of the conqueror whose triumph they had come to celebrate to-day.
And then, on Lachman Prasad, the magnificent state elephant of the Maharajah of Benares, came the Viceroy and Vicereine—the very centre and moving force of the whole procession—the two figures round whom all the others were but those who went before and those who came after, and who had come to do them homage in the King-Emperor's name. And she was an American. I guess there was no American heart among all the crowd that did not beat the quicker as Lachman Prasad came slowly on, bringing that one of us of whom we are most proud, that one from our country in the West who has risen to a position far beyond that of any other of her daughters. It was a magnificent sight as Lachman Prasad paced solemnly by. The howdah, the same used by Lord Lytton in 1877, was of burnished silver, that flashed in the sunlight like a mirror, the royal arms resplendent on the side panels, with the crowned figures of Wisdom and Plenty in front. Overhead, a huge umbrella of silk and gold was fixed above the crimson velvet seats. Sweeping to the ground, and almost covering the huge ex-
