gination to conceive. But as the chauffeur duly
reappeared at motor-time in the evening the incident passed unnoticed.

* * * * *

It is beyond the scope of the present narrative to trace the progress
of Boohooism during the splendid but brief career of the Yahi-Bahi
Oriental Society. There could be no doubt of its success. Its
principles appealed with great strength to all the more cultivated
among the ladies of Plutoria Avenue. There was something in the
Oriental mysticism of its doctrines which rendered previous belief
stale and puerile. The practice of the sacred rites began at once. The
ladies' counters of the Plutorian banks were inundated with requests
for ten-dollar pieces in exchange for banknotes. At dinner in the best
houses nothing was eaten except a thin soup (or bru), followed by fish,
succeeded by meat or by game, especially such birds as are particularly
pleasing to Buddha, as the partridge, the pheasant, and the woodcock.
After this, except for fruits and wine, the principle of Swaraj, or
denial of self, was rigidly imposed. Special Oriental dinners of this
sort were given, followed by listening to the reading of Oriental
poetry, with closed eyes and with the mind as far as possible in a
state of Stoj, or Negation of Thought.

By this means the general doctrine of Boohooism spread rapidly. Indeed,
a great many of the members of the society soon attained to a stage of
Bahee, or the Higher Indifference, that it would have been hard to
equal outside of Juggapore or Jumbumbabad. For example, when Mrs.
Buncomhearst learned of the remarriage of her second husband--she had
lost him three years before, owing to a difference of opinion on the
emancipation of women--she showed the most complete Bahee possible. And
when Miss Snagg learned that her brother in Venezuela had died--a very
sudden death brought on by drinking rum for seventeen years--and had
left her ten thousand dollars, the Bahee which she exhibited almost
amounted to Nirvana.

In fact, the very general dissemination of the Oriental idea became
more and more noticeable with each week that passed. Some members
attained to so complete a Bahee, or Higher Indifference, that they even
ceased to attend the meetings of the society; others reached a Swaraj,
or Control of Self, so great that they no longer read its pamphlets;
while others again actually passed into Nirvana, to a Complete Negation
of Self, so rapidly that they did not ev