rts of their anatomy
with iron skewers) without their wincing or showing visible signs
of pain. Other practices which these yogis have been carrying on
for centuries in their haunts in the Himalayas remind one forcibly
of the modus operandi of the Western hypnotist, and no doubt both
attain success through a knowledge, empirical though it may be,
of the same psycho-physiological laws.

Leaving these, let us examine some of the cases of mania--a few
of them acute, others more or less chronic, or passing on into a
drivelling dementia. Here is a man quite naked, except for the white
ashes rubbed over his dusky body, who, with long dishevelled locks and
wild expression, hurries up and down the bazaar barking like a dog,
and making it his boast never to use intelligible language. Another,
after painting his naked body partly white and partly black, has tied
all the little bits of rag he has picked up in the road to various
parts of his person. A third has adorned his filthy, mud-covered
body with wild-flowers, whose varying beauty, now withering in the
noonday sun, seems a picture of how his mind and conscience, once
the glory of his manhood, have now faded into a shadow. Another is
lying by choice in the mud by the roadside, to be fouled by the dust
of the passers-by, and almost trampled on by the cows, hoping by this
abject affectation of humility to be thought the greater saint. For,
by a curious paradox, it is often those who make the greatest display
of humility and subjection of the passions who show the greatest
sensitiveness to public opinion of their sanctity, and quite fail
in concealing their jealousy when some other Sadhu outdoes them,
and gains the greater meed of public admiration.

There is another man to be seen wandering aimlessly about and picking
up bits of filth and ordure, and putting them in his mouth and chewing
them. But to give a further account of these caricatures of humanity
would be loathsome to the reader, as their contemplation became to
me--the more so as the thought kept recurring to my mind, "And you
are one of them, too, now"; and who knows to what point the imitative
faculty of man, that contagion of the mind, may not raise or lower him?

By this time, however, the long fast and the fresh, keen air from the
Ganges made me begin to wonder how I was going to satisfy a call from
within. It was now close on midday, and I saw the Sadhus collecting
round certain houses with bowls, gourds, and