ne of the many jealous gods and
goddesses to be favored and propitiated--instead of this there was a
converted Indian minister who told his fellows of one God whose
characteristic is love, and whose worship is of the spirit. And
instead of the piteous bleating of slaughtered beasts there was the
fine rhythm of hymns whose English names one could easily {202}
recognize from their tunes in spite of the translation of the words
into the strange tongue of the Bengali.

At home, I may say just here, I am not accused of being flagrantly and
outrageously pious; but no open-minded, observant man, even if he were
an infidel, could make a trip through Asia without seeing what a
tremendously uplifting influence is the religion to which the majority
of Americans adhere as compared with the other faiths, and how
tremendously in Christian lands it has bettered and enriched the lives
even of those of

"Deaf ear and soul uncaring"

who ignore it or deride it. In no spirit of cant and with no desire to
preach, I set down these things, simply because they are as obvious as
temples or scenery to any Oriental traveller who travels with open
eyes and open mind.

But let us now go to Benares, the fountain-head of the Hindu faith,
the city which is to it what Mecca is to Mohammedanism and more than
Jerusalem is to Christianity. And Benares is so important that I must
give more than a paragraph to my impressions of it.

The view of the river-front from the sacred Ganges I found
surprisingly majestic and impressive. The magnificent, many-storied
pilgrim-houses, built long ago by wealthy princes anxious to win the
favor of the gods, tower like mountains from the river bank. A strange
mingling of many styles and epochs of Oriental architecture are they,
and yet mainly suggestive of the palaces and temples that lined the
ancient Nile. An earthquake, too, has heightened the effect by leaving
massive ruins, the broken bases of gigantic columns, that seem to
whisper tales even older than any building now standing in Benares.
For Benares, although its present structures are modern, was old when
the walls of Rome were built; it was historic when David sat on the
throne of Israel.

But while one may find elsewhere structures not greatly {203} unlike
these beside the Sacred River, nowhere else on earth may one see
crowds like these--crowds that overflow the acres and acres of stone
steps leading up from the river's edge through the maze of buil