I had seen locomotives, those Yankee Juggernauts, drive, roaring and
ruthless, over the beautiful bodies of fine old travellers' fictions;
and once, in Burmah, I had beheld a herd of stately elephants plunge
and scoot, scampering and squealing, like pigs on a railroad, away from
the steam scream of a new-fangled man-of-war. I had witnessed those
monstrous sacrileges, and survived,--had even, when locomotive and
steamer were passed, picked up my beautiful fictions again, and called
back my panic-stricken elephants with the gong of imagination; but here
were Gulliver and Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor torn from their golden
thrones, and this insolent De Sauty, crowned with zinc and copper and
sceptred with gutta-percha, set up in their places to the tune of "All
Eight."
"I will build you a house of gold, and you shall be my Padshah Begum,
some day," said the whimsically cruel King of Oude to Nuna, his favorite
Cashmere dancing-girl.
For a while Nima's dreams were golden. But the time came when the King
was not in the vein. He followed vacantly her most enchanting
undulations and yawned listlessly.
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