The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-01-06
P CHI! Do shut that drawer again-there's
 dear! I can't bear the smell of san

suggestive you really want to hear about it? I rather hate to tell that story, you know-it gives me the creeps would steal up behind quietly, and we only knew she there by the scent-the scent Of sandal-wood. I never got used to her cat-walk and her cat-ways but was fond of her-oh'' yes! You couldn't help it-with her little soft face and body, just like lot of small yellowtsh flowers put together in the shape of woman. E
 It came about this way, you see. When old Phineas Phyles put "The Girl From the Ba- zaars,' he appreciated that he was not going to have plain sailing to get the piece into harbor on Broadway. Imported delicacies, of course, are expected to have pretty high favors, but there written about the Indian bazaars, for people not to look bit askance at a musical comedy about the lady inhabitants. It's lot worse than Max1ms We're used to that sort of thing. We'll, Phineas decided that his best chance to make good lay in doing the thing so correctly and so gorgeously that half the cavillers would be hypnotized by the spendidness, and the other half could be brought around to looking on it as an education and improving spectacle-iike the bal let in Ben Hur" He got Lemuel (you know Jim Lemue1 who used to be with Poindexter: fellow with sort of flair for anything artistic and unusual) and sent him abroad to make shipments of Indian props and pretty Nautch girls Lemuel came back with splendid assortment of stuff costumes, jewels, local color-ano Ihungama' Little Golden Lady,"
 Of course it's hardly necessary to say that we called her Thingumy, at first. Later-but I'll tell you about it in sequence, just as 1t happened
 She was the daughter of high-caste Brahman, because she didn't want to marry the particular old sinner her people had picked out for her. Jolly right, too call it.
 It seemed that she the star dancer of the Bazaar in Delhi-or some such place-and LemueI got her to come over with him to do the Great Original Dance of India Broadway. We had been running two weeks on the road before her. She was only to appear in New York chorus with which she had anything to do on the stage before we came into town. So her arrival on the first night made sensation.
 We girls had been engaged for two-line bits and to wear, Our Only Mrs. Cresby's": gowns-the things she used to design O nights, after half hadn't much interest in the shoW-one doesn't have after five in which, like Alice and the Red Queen, you have to keep running just as hard as you to stay in the same place. "'.+i'"
 Of course Thungama should have had a dress ing room to herself, but it very long cast, and Sally Slye, soubrette, wanted the big one, which would have held at least bakers dozen of humble extras, and there were comedians, and sec ond and third comedians and barytones, and ten ors, and leads and lot of people with special ties; and somehow the Little Golden Lady" got crammed into the room with Lillian Leeds and me- You know Lil-she writes it Lilliane, be- lieve now; awfully pretty, with red hair-a girl like cocoanut tough outside but with the sweet gumy-I mean Thungama-descended upon us that night, very grave and gentle and Oriental with ayah h in of t Tam o called Bildrah. No, don't know what that means.
 I wish could give you an idea of what Thur. gama looked like. First-she beautiful Not pretty, you know-beautiful. Her eyes were very deep and large and thickly black. Dc, you know what I mean? Almost opaquey black. All very dark eyes look that way bit because you can't quite see into them; but Thungama's were won ders. They looked like circles of black velvet pasted in When she looking down-a per feet picture, with her delicate scrap of straight derstood her entirely. and that she a dear, and what charming simple little girl after all! But when she lifted up her five thousand-odd eye lashes and turned those inky balls in your drec- tion you got chills in your vertebrae and knew fectly well that you were up against something too big for you: the East. Thungama wasn't just a. a point
 Her clothes and the way she moved made the course you know those way-up Brahman people the finest aristocrats out. They have thirty forty centuries of exclusive picked. nooutsiders to begin with from family of kings back in the Dark Ages-which weren't dark in India, but looked it. She dressed in sari-a long flmy white thing that she rolled herself into like glorifed baridage-and a phulkari-a big shawl embroidered in crimson and bronze-and she al- ways lot of jewelry. Some of it stun ming, but 1t was awfully queer-not cut, or pol ished, set reguarly-just stuck together. in crusts and Jumps like popcorn balls. She had some unevenly colored stuff with wonderful soft shine in it, which she told us later was Jeypore enamel-and she looked as though she expected genufection at the very name
 Git wasn't walk)-softly up to the best dressing table, and the Tamil got down her knees and began to undo a great bundle of stuffs she had After the two comfortably installed, Thun- gama looked around her at the electric lights and the lOOKlng-SlaSSeS tlL was bully uroSS1nS room, beautifully fitted up-Oh, but they do you we'll at the Standard Theater'D and gave the faintest sort of smile.
 "Shish Mahal, Bildrah!" she said to the ayah, and the black creature prostrated herself hastily. Her shoulders looked shocked; her face never looked anything
 Thungama's' remark turned out to have been "The Hall of Mirrors, Bildrah!'-and "The Hall of Mirrors is the of some enormous room in their blessed old Tai Maha and frightfully sacred, so of course Bildrah shocked at the frivolity of the comparison. Thungama sometimes rather sacrilegious, I discovered She paid very
 little attention to the forms and ceremonies of her religion when she away from her priests. The only thing she kept pretty careful about "caste" She always having her things "de- filed" by being touched by infdels. At first it seemed rather nasty and inclined to re- sent it. but Gussie in Room Yidd before she was an actress and she knew about Kosher and "traef' and all that, and put down Thin gumys caste prejudtces to much the same pecu- liarity. Lii said that made 1t worse for it put us