| Show QUEER WEDDING BANQUET inhere alia unbidden guests scrambled tor bits from the table I 1 was married in india writes phil robinson the author and traveler I 1 engaged for our honeymoon a little house 16 miles or so from any other habitation of white man that stood on the steep white cliff of the aidor which here flows through a cairon of puro white marble close beside our house was a little hut where a holy man lived in charge of an adjoining earine earning money for himself and for the shrine by polishing little pieces of marble as mementos for visitors it was a wonderful place altogether and whilo my wife went in to change her dress the servants laid breakfast on the veranda overlooking the river at the first clatter of the plates there began to come down from the big tree that overshadowed the house and up the trees that grew in the behind it from the house roof itself from a multitude of solemn monkeys they cama up m couples and in families and took their places without noise or fuss on the veranda and sat there like an audience waiting for an entertainment to commence and when everything was ready the breakfast all laid the monkeys all seated I 1 went in to call my wife breakfast is ready and they are all waiting I 1 said who are waiting she asked in dismay 1 I thought we were going to be alone and I 1 was just coming out in my dressing gown never mind I 1 said the people about here are not very fashionably dressed themselves they wear pretty much the same things all the year round and so my wife came out imagine then her astonishment in the middle of the veranda stood her and all tho rest of the space as well as the failings railings rai lings and the steps was covered with monkeys as grave as possible and as motionless and silent as if they were stuffed only their eyes kept blinking and their little round ears kept twitching laughing heartily at which the monkeys only looked all the graver my wife sat down will they eat anything asked she try them 1 I said so she picked up a biscuit and threw it among the company and the result I 1 about monkeys jumped up in the air like one and just for one instant there was a riot that defies description the next instant every monkey was sitting in its place as solemn and serious as if it had never moved only their eyes winked and their ears twitched my wife threw them another biscuit and again the riot and then another and another and another but at length we had given all that wo had to give and got up to go the monkeys at once rose every monkey on the veranda and advancing gravely to the steps walked down them in a solemn procession old and young together and dispersed for the days occupations st louis globe democrat |
