he is a gainer in hope, if nothing else; while
we squander our champagne and gain nothing. That nut follows him even to
the grave, or burning ground, with mystic significances which I cannot
explain. I have been told that, when a very holy man dies, who always
clothed himself in ashes and never profaned his hands with work, his
disciples sometimes break a coconut over his head. If the spirit can
escape from the body through the sutures of the skull instead of by any
of the other orifices, it is believed to find a more direct route to
heaven, so the purpose of this ceremony may be to facilitate its exit
that way. In that case the breaking of the nut is perhaps only an
accident, due to its not being so hard as the holy man's skull.

XVI

THE BETEL NUT

One half the world does not know how the other half lives. Noticing a
pot of areca nut toothpaste on a chemist's counter, I asked him what the
peculiar properties of the areca nut were--in short, what was it good
for. He replied that it was an astringent and acted beneficially on the
gums, but he had never heard that it was used for any other purpose than
the manufacture of an elegant dentifrice. I felt inclined to question
him about the camel in order to see whether he would tell me that it was
a tropical animal, chiefly noted for the fine quality of its hair, from
which artist's brushes were made. Here was a man whose special business
it is to know the properties and uses of all drugs and their action on
the human system, and he had not the faintest notion that there are
nearly 300 millions of His Majesty's subjects, and many millions more
beyond his empire, who could scarcely think of life as a thing to be
desired if they were obliged to go through it without the areca nut. For
the areca nut is the betel nut.

In the Canarese language and the kindred dialects of Malabar it is
called by a name which is rendered as _adike_, or _adika_, in scientific
books, but would stand more chance of being correctly pronounced by the
average Englishman if it were spelled _uddiky_. The coast districts of
Canara and Malabar being famed for their betel nuts, the trade name of
the article was taken from the languages current there, and was tortured
by the Portuguese into _areca_. Over the greater part of India the
natives use the Hindustanee name _supari_, but by Englishmen it is best
known as the betel nut, because it is always found in company with the
betel leaf, with which,