TRICKS OF THE TRADES

Lion tamers and sword swallowers ply unique and dangerous trades. The movies have discovered the human fly setting bricks at the top of a chimney and hanging signs under the clouds. Some people can never find a niche for themselves in the dull trades of "butcher, baker, and candlestick maker". It is India, however, which lays claim to the most unusual callings-at least if one may judge from a Lucknow dispatch, which describes the work of the Monkey Deporter, the Corpse Fender, and the Shahbash-Wala.

The last of these is a sort of enthusiastic human phonograph whose only task is to howl vigorously all day long, "Shahbash, shahbash" ("well done, well done"). His yells of encouragement, however, are by no means haphazard. Without his mercenary and uncritical praise the Indian slackens at once. With him acting as deputy the Indian employer shows an interest in his men, every stroke of the pick receives due appreciation.

Less noisy but more necessary is the Corpse Fender, the gentleman who clears the shallows of the Ganges of scorched Hindus. The native's economy urges him to save the wood supplied by a hygienic government for funeral pyres; he puss the Ganges to its time-old use. From that practice rises the need for this Hindu, Gaffer Hexam, a fisher of men.

But truly the prize occupation is that of the Monkey Deporter, who is not, as might be supposed, a collector for Ring-ling or the Bronx, but is more like an animated scarecrow. In Northern India, there is a small brown monkey which is a pest to fruit cultivators, but is protected none-the-less by the Hanuman, the Monkey-God. This powerful divinity sends a dire pestilence upon all who injure his suppliants, as seems to have been the fashion with the gods of Greece as well. To avoid such a penalty, the growers have a corps of monkey catchers who snare the animals at night in nets and then loose them just over their neighbor's fence. As the neighbor also has his corps this policy insures plenty of food for the monkeys, plenty of work for the unemployed, and a little fruit for the owner.

America is proud of her trades; the steeple-jack writes for the Sunday supplements, the lion tamer has his picture upon every back fence in town. But in India one may follow the weirdest of trades and yet remain in the obscurity which surrounds an office clerk. It is a land of plenty for the interview-seeker: -and the interviews can be written in this country.