r anyone
happened to be looking at it or not.

The monks, who were really excellent fellows when not engaged in cutting
throats in the interest of the faith, regarded this device as a great
and glorious religious invention. They went down on their knees to it,
and were profoundly respectful. They also bowed to me so deeply, when I
first exhibited it, that I began to be puffed up with spiritual pride.
Lady Meadowcroft recalled me to my better self by murmuring, with a
sigh: "I suppose we really can't draw a line now; but it DOES seem to me
like encouraging idolatry!"

"Purely mechanical encouragement," I answered, gazing at my handicraft
with an inventor's pardonable pride. "You see, it is the turning itself
that does good, not any prayers attached to it. I divert the idolatry
from human worshippers to an unconscious stream--which must surely be
meritorious." Then I thought of the mystic sentence, "Aum, mani, padme,
hum." "What a pity it is," I cried, "I couldn't make them a phonograph
to repeat their mantra! If I could, they might fulfil all their
religious duties together by machinery!"

Hilda reflected a second. "There is a great future," she said at
last, "for the man who first introduces smoke-jacks into Tibet! Every
household will buy one, as an automatic means of acquiring Karma."

"Don't publish that idea in England!" I exclaimed, hastily--"if ever
we get there. As sure as you do, somebody will see in it an opening for
British trade; and we shall spend twenty millions on conquering Tibet,
in the interests of civilisation and a smoke-jack syndicate."

How long we might have stopped at the monastery I cannot say, had it not
been for the intervention of an unexpected episode which occurred just a
week after our first arrival. We were comfortable enough in a rough way,
with our Ghoorka cook to prepare our food for us, and our bearers to
wait; but to the end I never felt quite sure of our hosts, who, after
all, were entertaining us under false pretences. We had told them, truly
enough, that Buddhist missionaries had now penetrated to England; and
though they had not the slightest conception where England might be,
and knew not the name of Madame Blavatsky, this news interested them.
Regarding us as promising neophytes, they were anxious now that we
should go on to Lhasa, in order to receive full instruction in the
faith from the chief fountainhead, the Grand Lama in person. To this we
demurred. Mr. Landor's exper