d them the thakin was out,
and that the thakinma could not see anyone. I sent them all away.'

At the club that evening my friend was questioned as to why in his
absence no one was allowed to see his wife. The whole station laughed at
him, but I think he and his wife laughed most of all at the careful
observances of Burmese etiquette by the servant; for it is the Burmese
custom for a wife not to receive in her husband's absence. Anyone who
wants to see her must stay outside or in the veranda, and she will come
out and speak to him. It would be a grave breach of decorum to receive
visitors while her husband is out.

So even a Burmese woman is not free from restrictions--restrictions
which are merely rules founded upon experience. No woman, no man, can
ever free herself or himself from the bonds that even a young
civilization demands. A freedom from all restraint would be a return,
not only to savagery, but to the condition of animals--nay, even animals
are bound by certain conventions.

The higher a civilization, the more conventions are required; and
freedom does not mean an absence of all rules, but that all rules should
be founded on experience and common-sense.

There are certain restrictions on a woman's actions which must be
observed as long as men are men and women women. That the Burmese woman
never recognises them unless they are necessary, and then accepts the
necessity as a necessity, is the fact wherein her freedom lies. If at
any time she should recognise that a restriction was unnecessary, she
would reject it. If experience told her further restrictions were
required, she would accept them without a doubt.

CHAPTER XVI

WOMEN--III

'For women are very tender-hearted.'
_Wethandaya._

'You know, thakin,' said a man to me, 'that we say sometimes that women
cannot attain unto the great deliverance, that only men will come there.
We think that a woman must be born again as a man before she can enter
upon the way that leads to heaven.'

'Why should that be so?' I asked. 'I have looked at the life of the
Buddha, I have read the sacred books, and I can find nothing about it.
What makes you think that?'

He explained it in this way: 'Before a soul can attain deliverance it
must renounce the world, it must have purified itself by wisdom and
meditation from all the lust of the flesh. Only those who have done this
can enter into the Great Peace. Many men