between his knees, a short white jacket fastened closely at the neck, and a topknot of hair under a cap. A queer-looking Japanese, surely.
"Where are you from?" we asked.
"Rangoon!" drawled the ghostly Maung Somebody, and when we protested to the Brahman that he had deceived us with a mere every-day, near-by Burmese, he said: "Oh! Burmese, Japanese, just the same. Their country is a long way off, but they all come to Buddha-Gaya."
The shadows were lengthening and palms and pipuls were rustling in the afternoon wind, but even after hours spent in Mahabodhi there was something wanting, something inharmonious in one's general impression. The temple was too well preserved, and proclaimed too loudly the plumb-line and the trowel's work. Sentiment and day-dreams could not play upon those precise angles and sharp edges. And the Tree of Knowledge! as trim, compact and shapely as a California orange-tree, with squawking parrots flashing in and out of its flickering foliage, as if it were but a common tree for birds to perch upon! There was too much of shock and disillusionment at Mahabodhi; too much of the garish every day; a lack of romance and mystery, and of any real sense of antiquity and of chance for imagination.
We drove back with our treasure of sacred leaves, and saw the busy bazaars of Gaya before a salmon and saffron sunset of blinding glory held us at the dak bangla's gate, while the blind beggar wailed by the roadside, the women went to and fro with their
