Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1893 — A MOTLEY CROWD. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A MOTLEY CROWD.

The SoiiepDre Fair, India, One of the Piet* uresque Sights. One of the most marvelous sights in India is the Sonepore Fair, held at Bengal each fall. The fair lasts a week, and perhaps during that time there assembles the most varied and picturesque crowd seen anywhere on earth, with the possible exception of the traders at the great annual mart of Nijni Novgorod, Russia. Thereare thousands of horses and ponies collected for sale, hundreds of ele-

phants, camels, rhinoceroses, tigers and every animal procurable in India. The fair teems with devotees, sightseekers, fakirs, mendicants and merchants until it is packed into a hotbed of disease. In such a motley collection of men and animals are of hourly occurrence and fatalities are frequent. Often an elephant breaks loose and, getting scared, commits great ravages down the, tightly packed streets and by-ways between the bazar booths, trampling people to death. At the close of the fair comes bathing day. Then hundreds of thousands of devout Hindoos flock to Sonepore to wash away the sins of the year by bathing in the sacred waters of the Ganges.

England has no monopoly of “grand old men.” Good and great Marshal Canrobert, kneeling in the Chapel of the Invalides, when his fellow veteran MacMahon was brought home to his last rest under the same roof with Napoleon, furnished a splendid example of endurance amid the world’s rough usage. Canrobert is eight-four, and the last of the French Marshals. He has seen his fellow campaigners in Algeria and those by whom he fought side by side at Magenta and Solferino depart one by one; yet he lingers, as if unwilling to surrender the baton which represents such historic memories.

I’eople should never go in the early morning to get boots and shoes fitted. In the latter part of the day the feet are at their maximum size. Activity and standing tend to enlarge the feet. If people .would remember this rule there would not be so many complaints of shoes when .worn being tight which, when fitted, seemed so comfortable.

A PANIC AT AN INDIAN FAIR.