Notwithstanding my viceregal passport, the superior officer
very plainly entertains suspicions as to my motives in undertaking this
journey; his superficial politeness no more conceals his suspicions than
a glass globe conceals a fish. Before they take their departure three
yameni-runners are stationed in my room to assume the responsibility for
my safe-keeping during the night.
An hour or so is spent waiting in the yamen next morning, apparently for
the gratification of visitors continually arriving. When the yamen is
crowded with people I am provided with a boiled fish and a pair of
chop-sticks. Witnessing the consumption of this fish by the Fankwae is
the finale of the "exhibition," and candor compels me to chronicle the
fact that it fairly brings down the house.
It is a drizzly, disagreeable morning as I trundle out of the city gate
over cobble-stones, made slippery by the rain. Walking before me is a
slim young yameni-runner with a short bamboo-spear, and on his back a
white bull's-eye eighteen inches in diameter; he is bare-footed and
bare-headed and bare-legged. In the poverty of his apparel, the all-round
contempt of personal appearance and cleanliness, and the total absence of
individual ambition, this young person reminds me forcibly of our
happy-go-lucky friend Osman, in the garden at Herat.
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