CHRISTMAS IN CALCUTTA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2130, 20 December 1894, Page 11

CHRISTMAS IN CALCUTTA.

We are in the gardens behind the palace of the King of Oudh. .The sun shines gloriously overhead, the sky is a pale cloudlese blue, and the foliage around U3 shows every shade and tint from brown to scarlet, from the palest to the deepest green.

We saunter along the grass under the trees beside the avenue, and find a quiet spot with a pool of clear water haunted by swans before us. The ground is carpeted with soft) grass and shaded with trees.

On one side, 300 yds away, is a bank of shrubs with the most gorgeous variety of colouring, from mauve and lilac to ciimson red.

On the other three, cool restful green leaves.

On such a Christmas morning it is good to be alive.

Let us think of It as we shiver over our fires in England.

We spread our rugs and ooats on the ground and lie down and smoke lazily. Presently the Kliidmutgars arrive with hampers.

We do not move, for in India we have not that irrational and idiotic notion that a picnic is co picnic unless you wait upon yourselves, lay your own lunch, and burn your own fingers over your kettle. The lunch ia admirable, from the solids to the fruir, from the drinks to the ice. Nothing has been forgotten, for once a Khidmutgar has been taught a thing, he may be relied upon to do it again with absolute exactitude on a similar occasion till the crack of doom, unless he ia idiotic.

A picnic Is a complete rest, with nothing to do save to lie still and enjoy. No one even talks unless the spirit moves him. For the most part we sit quiet, drinking in the beauty of the scene. The servants pass silently to and fro, handing dishes, which are accepted or lejected. as silently. It is waste of energy to speak. The cool breeza fans us gently ; there are no mosquitoes ; all is paaca. Last of all come the coffee and the cigars. Those estimable men who remembered the ice did not forget the coffee, and we smoke paacefully and talk desultorily of England and of India, of a fatuous ochlocracy at Home and a scarcely lesa fatuous bureaucracy in India. But there is no argument, no heated discussion, only qaiet, careless expressions of opinion which while away the time and trouble no man.

As we drive back in the cool of the evening the Bhadows gather, the Bun sinks In the west, and a red glow spreads and deepens over the horizon.

It is Chrißtmas night, and we bave Bpent our feast day as it should be spent in the Golden East.— Saturday Review.

•«,• The Christmas ghoat has carefully marched with the times. Dickcns's goblins would now be as impossible as Mr Pickwick himself. The old-fashioned ghost story, in apite of its rather crudely-coloured horrors, generally betrayed an undercurrent of Chrietmassing, and there was not unfrequently a Bort of warm-champagny-old-particular-brandy-punchied air about the very izho»t» themselves