turn of the road to follow. One whitebearded old man said, 'Go to the Spice Market and turn north; that will bring you to the Jewelers; there, if you do not find anyone to tell you which way to turn, go east; that will bring you to the Flower-Weavers' (garland-makers) quarters; turn east again— But Shiva Vishnu, what is the use of so much information? One step at a time, say the senile and the wise! Therefore go, brothers, first to the Spice Market, and if you lose your way, it will only fulfill some prophecy or other what is life but a fulfilling or defeating of prophecies? Without doubt you will find your Holy One-Shiva, Shiva!'

As we took leave of the old man, my brother said, "There is no race on earth that can talk as poetically as we do. Every one of us is born with the peacock's colors in his imagination.'

We hastened to the Spice Market, then to the cross-roads of the Ten Stallions; there we turned northward to the embankment called Gem of Gems. Here we made an ascent of a hill covered with houses five hundred years old, buttressed and held together like small Gothic churches. hugging one another. We went through courtyards of old palaces, flagged as early as the days when men first learned to make flags. We passed people's drawing-rooms, laundries, flower gardens, over yellow sandstone fences, down broken pavements, in and out of gullies wrought with stones as old as the world itself.

Then suddenly we came upon a vast garden enclosed by tall red-brick walls. There was a gate made of blue-black iron bars; on it two letters were carved in Sanskrit: we pushed through this gate into a garden, green with the fierce verdure of the tropics after heavy rain. We did not wait for permission. We pressed our way past a person or two men or women until it

seemed, after passing endless bungalows and corridors, that we were held at bay by a sound at bay by a sound the sound of a marvelous lion-like intonation of Sanskrit. Both of us felt its power. It was not Sanskrit; it was a ring of fire woven out of a chant. One who wished to cross that ring must know the secret of Immortality. No doubt it was the tiger-voice of the Holy One intoning, —

'He has no fear of growth, senility, or death, for he has put on the flamegarb of Immortality. Now with hands of clay he gathers the golden fire of deathlessness. He is stiller than the mountains, hence swifter than the swiftest flight of man's mind: subtler than the subtlest, as a tiger in the blackness of the forest. He is the Eagle of Eternity flying through the wilderness of Time. He has unlocked the door of soul-ecstasy for the Spirit of men to enter in. Though desireless, he fulfills all desires! O thou fierce silence! quicken my senses, smite my tongue till it drips with the flaming honey of Truth-Utterance, and this my mortal body becomes Thy Chalice of Immortality. Hari Immortality. Hari Om Hari Om

Hari-i-i 0-0-m-m!'

Yet it was not these words, but the golden thunder-vibrant voice, touching chords of infinite range and shade, that held us motionless where we stood. He chanted till the sun went down.

I know not how long we waited in the vestibule, but at last, when we entered the presence, we found the Holy One seated on a wooden couch and a small brass lamp burning near him. The room was absolutely bare. The red-sandstone walls looked gaunt and hard, the cemented gray floor felt cool under our travel-hot feet.

We fell on our faces before Maharajkeshar, the Lion - the name they gave the Blessed One. It was such a joy and relief to lie there on one's face! Every moment I felt that gladness was passing

into my heart with a pang. I know not how long we lay thus, prostrate before him.

Suddenly we heard him say, 'Rest a long time here.'

Now I looked at him. Yes, he was indeed holy. The power poured from him, infusing all the air of the room with life. It is impossible to describe it. Those dark brown eyes shone upon us with the simple radiance of a child's, yet they were full of maturity; slanting a bit when he looked sideways, their pupils and the whites almost wrinkled with age; but his gaze was as fresh as a child's after a night of restful sleep. He had a straight tall forehead and straight brows. His face was lean and strong, there was not an atom of superfluous flesh, nowhere a single line to indicate care or worry. When I looked at his mouth I knew at once that he was old, for his lips were drawn and sunken; but the youth of his beautiful nose, firmly modeled chin and clear eyes, mitigated the age that had touched his mouth. I learned later on that at the time the Holy One was suffering from a carbuncle on his left shoulder it was the pain of it that one saw in his lips.

He spoke: 'What brings you here?' I answered, 'Problems, my Lord.' 'Problems?' he questioned then laughed. "Thou hast acquired the Western habit of worrying and running the Universe. Whose Universe is it, thine or Brahma's? If it is His why not look for Him and find out what He wants from it?'

'But this hate between the East and the West, my Lord. Throughout the East I have heard nothing but distrust of the West. From Egypt to Burmah all men say that the Westerners are thieves, all that they want is oil wells and money. I am afraid this attitude will cause much trouble between Asia and Europe.'

"Thou art very tender-hearted, my child. But do not rob the heart of the discrimination that is its own. Thou art in need of rest. Sit here and idle away time. Eat sweetmeats and sing songs. The Universe can wait till thou art well!'

That evening we spent quietly in the bungalow allotted to us by the Holy One.

II

Next morning about five o'clock we were roused by one of the disciples of the Blessed Master. He wished to know if we would care to bathe in the Ganges. We assented, and were hardly outside our rooms when we heard the thud of human feet. Beat, beat, beat, sounded the bare feet of the oncoming pilgrims. If I were to describe India by a single sound, it would be that beat of the feet of Man. Someone is always walking barefoot and marking the rhythm of pilgrimage; the dust of illusion darkens our eyes, and the veils of time and space delude our minds; yet the heart and feet of every Indian know where to search and whither to look for that ultimate Holiness of the Universe-God.

A very short walk brought us to the river bank. The brief morning twilight had already vanished, and the warm white light of day shimmered on the waters of the Ganges. Every time a woman or a man clad in crimson or saffron dipped in the water the colors broke into a thousand running bits of liquid splendor. Here and there against the half-leaning and half-falling sculptured walls of a temple, girls in violet chuddars, their yellow skirts dripping, moved like statues in stately procession in an antique world, or like frescoes, suddenly come to life.

At last I found myself swimming down the glad currents of the sacred river. The tall stiff embankments of

the Gwalior Ghat slipped by me; halfsubmerged temples, shrines of an older cult, raised their red turrets as if to greet me, as stroke by stroke I went where the dead were being cremated and their ashes thrown into the Ganges. Now and then I swam past a calm figure of a Yogi sitting on a fallen temple tower, lost in meditation. Little boats with their painted sides crossed and recrossed my way, yet I swam on to the burning ghat. Death, death alone, I wanted to see. The many colored draperies of the bathing populace, the umbrellas made of coco palms, the chanting priests all the moving life against the hard yellow walls of the embankment, delayed me not. I wanted to behold Death. At last I reached the burning ghat. There I stopped.

I saw two bodies on their respective pyres just catching fire, while the ashes of a third were being thrown into the river. Ah, wonder of wonders. "Thousands are dying the death that no one can avoid, yet the rest of us live as though we should never die!' Those burning pyres sputtered and sang as if life to them was a festival.

Suddenly I saw the Holy One. I could not believe my own eyes. Near, yes, right near one of the pyres he stood, with three of his disciples, all dressed in ochre-colored robes. I at once climbed out of the water and went toward them to salute the Maharaj. He said; 'One of our patients died during the night. We had to cremate him. The weather is so hot that any delay in burning a corpse may cause putrefaction.'

'But, Master, why do you have this institution? Why have a hospital right in the midst of a sanctuary of meditation?'

'It is a long story,' he answered. Then turning to the three of his companions, he remarked, 'I think now.

that the fire is well started you will not need me, so I will go and bathe. Will you all go home after you have finished your work?'

Then he turned toward me. 'Come, let us bathe and have a swim.'

In a few moments he and I were swimming in the Ganges. He swam wonderfully. Suddenly I remembered the carbuncle growing on his back and urged him not to swim any more. Like a naughty lad he answered, 'I do not think of carbuncles when I am at play. Come, race me against the current!'

It was hard work for me. I admit he went against the moderate current faster than I. Again we passed the Yogi lost in meditation on the turret of a fallen temple, and the bathers, their glittering purple, orange, russet, and green draperies clinging to their bodies like liquid colors as they came out of the water and up the stately steps of the ghat, while above them gleamed the red, brown, white, and tawny temples in the fierce light of the sun. Lo, he had sprung like a lion of white flames over the city and flung himself on a black cloud black cloud that 'elephant of the sky' as the poet said.

At last we reached a place where we saw my brother standing on the edge of the water, with eyes shut chanting to the sun:

'Golden hands,

Golden wings,

With thy fiery radiance

Scorch and consume all ills and evil,
And bring that day

That will press my heart against the
heart of God.'

The Holy Man looked at me, his dark brown eyes twinkling with mischief. He said, 'I suppose thou canst no more sit still and meditate on God than a tiger can concentrate on vegetarianism!'

'I am not pious like my brother,' I replied meekly.

'Ha, thou callest him pious, him who has beheld God?' the Holy One ejaculated.

'Has he truly seen God, my Lord?' 'Canst thou not smell the fragrance of his soul? If thy spirit's nostrils cannot inhale it, can words give thee the perfume of yon man's vision?'

"Then he has seen God?' I inquired and affirmed in the same breath.

'Ask him. He will tell thee,' said the Holy One very simply.

We left my brother to meditate on the river bank, and went on toward the Holy Man's abbey. Again I noticed how beautiful some of the figures looked clad in their wet raiments. The rhythm of their barefooted walk and the close clinging wet colors made the women seem creatures from some ancient myth. Here and there a porter, bare to the waist, would pass with a heavy weight on his head. To see so much of a body, such pleasing skin, such play of muscles was a strange contrast to New York, where everyone is dressed to the hilt. Here in India the bronze men carrying loads on their heads looked stately - in fact no king is so majestic as men or women carrying loads on their heads. The dignity of it is unsurpassable. No matter how cultivated a society grows its toilers will always look more in harmony with art than its idlers. "The carrier of a load is greater than the wearer of a crown,' Benares told me.

The Holy One who had been walking silently beside me suddenly remarked: 'If the Without is so beautiful, how much more beautiful the Within must be!'

'But, Master, can't I tarry a bit at the door of the Without?'

He answered: "Thou dost not tarry; thou dost hasten to catch the glamour of the apparent. The pursuer of the thunder cannot afford to tarry. But he who sits above the thunder cloud in

the centre of Heaven tarries forever. He need not move any more, for all things are happening before him. The centre of the Within is the seat of vantage from which to see the drama

the players, on the stage as well as off, and the audience too. Take that seat and none other. Come Within, my son!'

We were at the gate of the abbey. We entered and again passed the many buildings on the grounds. In one I noticed about a dozen sick people being carried in. In the next building we saw patients lying in bed close to the wide open windows.

'Why a hospital, and a day clinic as well?' I asked. 'How did you come to have them here?'

'My son, it is the punishment for doing good. Go, change thy dress and come back to my chamber. I will explain it to thee.'

III

When I entered his room again the odor of sandalwood greeted my breath. The walls looked cool and hard and the floor on which I stood felt cooler yet. This was the first time I had walked barefoot in thirteen years; my feet were sore. I had almost lost my entire faith in the rhythm and beauty of barefoot walking. But I felt the same sense of a strange power pervading the room.

On the floor were seated two young ladies, an old gentleman, their father, and a young monk in yellow, crouching before the Maharaj as though bowed by his sanctity.

The Holy One bade me be seated. 'I am glad,' he said, 'that thy feet pain thee. That will start the easing of the pain in thy soul.'

He turned to the others; 'What was I talking about? - I remember the hospital which is a punishment for doing good.'

'How so, my Lord?' questioned the old gentleman.

'Even thou, an old man, dost ask me that question also? Well it all began one day about eleven years ago when one man, a pilgrim, fell ill. I, who was meditating with a brother disciple under a big tree decided to stop meditating, and care for the man who had fallen sick by the roadside. He was a lean money-lender from Marwar and he had come to Benares to make rich gift to some temple in order to have his way to Heaven paved in solid gold. Poor fellow, he did not know that any gift made thus binds a soul all the more to the Chain of Desire.

a

'I ministered to him until he recovered and could return to Marwar, to lend more money, I suppose. But the rascal did me an evil turn. He spread the news all along his way that if people fell sick near my big tree I took care of them. So very soon two more people came and fell sick at the prearranged place. What else could my brother disciple and I do but take care of them? Hardly had we cured them when we were pelted with more sick folk. It was a blinding shower. I saw in it all a terrible snare: beyond a doubt, I felt, if I went on taking care of the sick, bye and bye I should lose sight of God.

'Pity can be a ghastly entanglement to those who do not discriminate, and there I stood, with a wall of sick men between me and God. I said to myself, "Like Hanuman, the monkey, leap over them and fling thyself upon the Infinite." But somehow I could not leap, and I felt lame. Just at that juncture a lay disciple of mine came to see me; he recognized my predicament and, good soul that he was, he at once got hold of a doctor and an architect, and set to work to build the hospital. Very strange though it seems, other illusions coöperated with that good

VOL. 134-NO. 2

man to help him the money-changer, the first fellow I cured, sent an additional load of gold and built the day clinic. In six years the place was a solid home of delusion where men put their soul-evolution back by doing good. Shiva, Shiva!'

'But, Master, I notice that your own disciples, boys and young girls, work there?' I put in my question.

'Yes, like these two young ladies here, other young people come to me to serve God. Well, youth suffers from the delusion that it can do good. But I have remedied that somewhat; I let them take care of the sick as long as their outlook on God remains vivid and untarnished, but the moment any of my disciples show signs of being caught in the routine of good works like the scavenger's cart that follows the routine of removing dirt every morning I send that soul off to our retreat in the Himalayas, there to meditate and purify his soul. When he regains his God-outlook to the fullest, if he wishes, I let him return to the hospital. Beware, beware: good can choke up a soul as much as evil.'

'But if someone does not do it, how will good be done?' questioned the old gentleman in a voice full of perplexity.

'Live so,' replied the master in a voice suddenly stern, 'Live so that by the sanctity of thy life all good will be performed involuntarily. My children do not try to do good. Live like the holy man, my whilom teacher, the AirEater; live so that evil will never dare come near where you live, and all the good will be accomplished of itself. For, as a scavenger removes dirt and constantly watches out lest the dirt infect him with disease, so the doer of good lives in perpetual fear of his soul being diseased with the evil he carts away from the house of life. He does not know into what danger the routine of good work can plunge his God-seeking