The Indian metropolis presents an array of fine homes, bungalows and stucco villas, put up when the rupee was worth two shillings and a penny, wherein unhappiness may now dwell, because the rupee has depreciated to a shilling and fourpence. The parade of fashion on the Maidan late in the afternoon presents every variety of equipage and livery known to the East, The horse-flesh of Calcutta is uniformly fine. Better animals than are daily grouped around the band stand, or along the rail of the race-course, cannot be found short of Europe. The viceroy is often seen driving a mail phaeton, preceded by two native lancers and followed by four others. The automobile has many devotees in Calcutta, and bicycle-riding natives are everywhere. The babu is exceedingly fond of wheeling on the Maidan whenever he can escape from his account books. Nearly every carriage on the Maidan in the afternoon has two men on the box and two footmen behind, all gorgeously dressed--servants are cheap in India. At sundown nowadays half the pianos in Chowringee--where Calcutta's officials and prosperous commercial people reside--seem to be playing airs from American light operas, and not infrequently a regimental band compliments the United States by playing "Hiawatha" or one of Sousa's compositions. It is compensating to a person burdened with the habit of wondering where words come from, to discover that Dum-dum is a suburb of Calcutta, and is important as a military post and as the seat of an ammunition factory and arsenal. [Illustration: SHIPPING ON THE HOOGHLY, CALCUTTA] The sights of Calcutta are unimportant. The general post-office occupies the site of the native prison whose horrors of the Black Hole stain chapters of Indian history; and a description of the burning of human bodies on the bank of the Hooghly, and of the animal sacrifices at the old Hindu temple at Khali-ghat, would be disagreeably gruesome. The gaudy Jain temple interests for a few minutes, and the exterior of Fort William impresses the casual spectator. The zooelogical garden is conventional, and the feature of the botanical garden is probably the largest banyan tree in the world. Calcutta hotels, deplorably poor, have been fitly described as of two kinds--bad and adjectively bad. All that interests the visitor within the modern capital of ancient India is the movement of official and social life, and the parade of races forming the population of the marvelous, mysterious country.