I sold my pony in Bhamo. I was exceedingly sorry to part with it, for it had come with me 800 miles in thirty days, over an unusually difficult road, at great variations of altitude, and amid many changes of climate. And it was always in good spirit, brave and hardy, carrying me as surely the last twenty miles as it had the first twenty. Yet, when I came to sell it, I was astonished to learn how many were its defects. Its height, which was 12.3 in Nampoung, had shrunk three days later to 11.3 in Bhamo. This one subaltern told me who came to look at the pony with the view, he said, of making me an offer. Another officer proved to me that the off foreleg was gone hopelessly; a third confirmed this diagnosis of his friend, and in a clinical lecture demonstrated that the poor beast was spavined, and that its near hind frog was rotten, "as all Chinese ponies' are," he added. One of the mounted constabulary, a smart officer, fortunately discovered in time that the pony was a roarer; while the Hungarian Israelite who lends help on notes of hand, post-obits, personal applications, and other insecurities, and is on terms of friendly intimacy with most of the garrison, when about to make an offer, found, to his great regret, that the pony's hind legs were even more defective than the fore. The end of it was that I had to sell the pony--for what it cost me. I am indebted to the Reverend Mr. Roberts, of the American Baptist Mission, for helping me to sell my pony. Mr. Roberts has a pious gift for buying ponies and selling them--at a profit. He offered me 40 rupees for my pony. I mentioned this offer at the Bhamo Club, when a civilian present at once offered me 50 rupees for the pony; he did not know the pony, he explained, but--he knew Roberts.
In a steamer of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company I came down the river from Bhamo to Mandalay. When I left the Commissioner's bungalow, the entire staff of the establishment and of some neighbouring bungalows assembled to do me honour, creeping up to me, and with deep humility carrying each an article of my possessions from my room down to the porch. There were the _dhobie_ and _bearer_, the waterman with his goatskin waterbag, the washerman who washed my blue Chinese garments as white as his own, the _syce_ who did not collect grass, the cook who sent me ten bad eggs in three days, and the Christian Madrasi, the laziest rascal in Bhamo, who early confessed to me his change of faith and the transformation it had effected in the future prospects of his soul. There was the Burmese watchman, and the English-speaking Burmese clerk, and the coolie who went to the bazaar for me, and many others. They lined the stairs as I came out, and placed their hands reverently to their foreheads when I passed by. It was pleasant to see such disinterested evidence of their good will, and my only regret was that I could not reward them according to their deserts. But to the Chinese coolie who was grinning to see my paltry outfit carried by so many hands, and who gathered together all I possessed and swung off with it down past the temples to the steamer landing in the native city, I gave a day's pay, and cheerfully--though he then asked for more.