s on top of one
another above its highest point--the massive bulk in either case
stretching thousands and thousands of feet above the line of
everlasting snow. Such is Kinchinjunga.

Spellbound we watched as if forbidden intruders upon a view it was not
meet for any but the high gods themselves to see. About it all was a
suggestion of illimitableness, of more than earthly majesty, of
infinite serenity and measureless calm, which sat upon our spirits
with a certain eerie unworldliness.

It only confirmed an almost inevitable conjecture when I learned later
that it was in sight of the Himalayas that Gautama Buddha dreamed his
dream of the Nirvana and of its brooding and endless peace in which
man's fretful spirit--

"From too much love of living
From hope and fear set free"--

may find at last the rest that it has sought in vain through all our
human realm of Time and Place.

Lucknow, India.

{210}

XXI

"THE POOR BENIGHTED HINDUS"

GREAT indeed are the uses of Poetry. Consider by way of illustration
how accurately and comprehensively some forgotten bard in four short
lines has pictured for us the true condition of the inhabitants of
England's great Indian Empire:

"The poor, benighted Hindu,
He does the best he kin do
He sticks to his caste from first to last.
And for pants he makes his skin do."

A Mr. Micawber might dilate at length upon how this achievement in
verse informs us (1) as to the financial condition of the people, to
wit, they are "poor," the average annual income having been estimated
at only $10, and the average wages for day labor in the capital city
of India only 6 to 20 cents per diem; (2) as to their intellectual
condition, "benighted," ninety men in each hundred being unable to
read or write any language, while of every thousand Indian women 993
are totally illiterate; (3) as to the social system, each man living
and dying within the limits of the caste into which he is born; and
(4) as to the clothing, garb or dress of the inhabitants (or the
absence thereof), the children of both sexes being frequently attired
after the manner of our revered First Parents before they made the
acquaintance of the fig tree, while the adults also dispense generally
with trousers, shoes, and stockings, and other impedimenta of our
over-developed civilization.

{211}

Great indeed are the uses of poetry. In all my letters from India I
shall hardly be able to do more than expand