202 THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



ordinary house lizard, leaving nothing but one or two of the 

 larger bones. His habitation was a box with a glass top, 

 in which I used to exhibit him sometimes at an evening 

 conversazione. It was the holiday season at Deccanabad, 

 and many fair women and brave men had gathered at that 

 pleasant station. There was the jaded literary man, seek- 

 ing to recover the exhausted phosphorus of his system and 

 the departed freshness of his thoughts, his wife, suffering 

 from an acute attack of want of occupation, the pinched 

 and dyspeptic banker, just escaped from the treadmill for 

 a brief season, the stalwart police officer, sick of ordinary 

 crime. 



These and many more gathered round the arena, and 

 the spirit of Nero was there too. It was the time of 

 year when the lamp is visited by those long-legged green 

 creatures of the cricket sort, which look innocent and vege- 

 tarian, and are as carnivorous as Young Bombay ; so the 

 entertainment commenced with the introduction of a few 

 of these. The centipede heard their footsteps, and started 

 up thirsting for blood, but, being very shortsighted, he could 

 not make out where they were, and the scene became like 

 a game of blind-man's buff, the monster, with open jaws, 

 rampaging wildly about the box, while the crickets leaped 



