Our love had surrounded him like a fence, and he could not depart nor free himself from the entanglement of our affection; so he had commanded us to chant; and as the intoning engulfed us

Om Hari Om· and our hold relaxed, he slipped through our loosened grasp. Suddenly, as a sword falls through the air, silence fell upon our chanting he was gone! His face, which was always so full of expression, now lay expressionless and white. His eyes were closed. His mouth grew hard and rigid. The morning breeze trembled through his hair for a moment.

We anointed the corpse with pure sandal oil, covered it with hand-made homespun silk of ochre color, then carried it, bed, cot and all, on our shoulders to the burning ghat.

It seemed that all Benares had heard the news, but how I do not know. Other men and women, holy also, had already gathered at the ghat, and the old lady, who taught that All is nothing, that truculent old man who cried there is no God - both of them had reached the ghat before us. Flowers poured from all directions as we went our way. It was overwhelming.

Now it is a law in Benares that if a Holy One dies in the sacred city he is not cremated. His naked body is thrown into currents of the river, to be borne to the sea. A holy body must be given to the Holy Ganges. Even the flames are too impure for it!

'Prehi, prehi

Pathibhih purbevi.'

'Go, go, on the path of ancient mystery!'

The old words rang out, and the river received him in her arms; and swiftly bore him from our sight. We gazed and gazed at the flowers that floated after till they too were lost in the blue distance like bubbles in the sea.

After our ablutions and prayers, we returned to the monastery. Now that he was gone, we must remember his injunction to shed no tears. When a holy one departs this life, there can be no official or unofficial mourning. So as soon as we could gather our forces of self-control together, we gave a feast of rejoicing to all Benares. Pilgrims, priests, holy men, beggars, and rajahs

seven thousand or more came and sang the praise of God. His light shone on all faces and his essence danced in every heart. In every human being I am the expected flush upon his face.'

And then at last I was no longer alone. Peace returned to my heart with the light from the eyes of my brothers.

The following week, I set out on another pilgrimage to the New World. What had I found to bring back with me—what offering from India in upheaval to America in the heyday of her prosperity? Only the ancient sweet spices and myrrh, only the old incense of love; but my orders were plain, and with joy I turned again to the West.

I bade good-bye to my brother; his face is with me now. Next to the Holy One, his is most sacred to me.

As for the last time I took the dust from his feet, he said simply: 'Finish thy quest. Remember the warning of the Holy One. Criticize no more! Buddha blessed the world, and in blessing gave new life. There the miracle! Farewell but come back again and bring to us the face of blessing and benediction from the West.'

I kept looking back at my brother as my train moved out of Benares, and for the first time in my life, I beheld tears in his eyes. Then all was lost to view. But no for now on the western horizon I saw dimly, but ever growing more and more clear before me, the beloved Face of my Brother.

SINCE I first entered London through the granite portals of Euston Station, forty years ago, London has been practically rebuilt. The London of my youth was the London of Charles Dickens, which has to all intents and purposes disappeared: it lay, roughly, between the Strand and Oxford Street and west of Ludgate Circus. If that keenly observing novelist were to come back, it would take some time for him to reestablish himself; for whole districts which he knew well have disappeared and in their places are wide avenues lacking altogether the character that was distinctive of the London of his day. The Strand, once the narrowest of the great thoroughfares connecting the east with the west end, has been widened and almost entirely rebuilt, but it still remains one of the ugliest important streets in Europe. The semicircle of Aldwych and the wide avenue, Kingsway, abutting upon it, are equally characteristic of New York, Chicago, Berlin, or any other large city.

Probably the finest site in London presents at the moment a rather desolate appearance, occupied as it is by one very large office building, built by Mr. Irving T. Bush of New York, bearing the legend over its principal entrance, "To the Friendship of the English-Speaking Peoples.' Only the middle one of three equally large buildings, all to be under the direction of Mr. Bush and occupying what is

I

termed an island site, is at present completed. I cannot wholly commend the beauty of 'Bush House,' as it is called, but it is a magnificent venture, and I am inclined to doubt whether any man in England would have had the courage to undertake it.

Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square remain much as they were when I first saw them. Coutts's Bank is now occupying the site of an arcade where toys and trash were formerly sold, and a row of mean buildings have given way to a group of unimportant portals called the Admiralty Arch, giving entrance to a superb roadway leading to Buckingham Palace, planned a century ago by John Nash.

The thought of this great architect who did so much to give to London its substantial, if somewhat gloomy character, leads me to condemn as restless and trivial much of the work that has displaced his. He is responsible for the dignified Carlton House Terrace, which yet remains, and for Regent Street which extends from York Steps to Oxford Street, which is rapidly disappearing. His was, as someone has said, a supreme example of good manners in architecture. Nash, having secured an elevation that satisfied him, got out his charts and compasses and laid out a fine wide street with a quadrant and squares and circuses to break its monotony, and then said to the builders, 'Now go ahead and build two miles of that, one on each side of the

street.' Gradually these old buildings are coming down. Piccadilly Circus is a circus no longer, and soon the old insurance building with its arcaded front, which has been for so long a landmark, under which so many women have waited for the man who never came, will disappear, and there will be revealed in all the cheap tawdriness of white terra cotta, now mercifully hidden, the Regent Palace Hotel of Messrs. Lyons.

It will, I suppose, be another ten years before Regent Street is completely rebuilt; the buildings now being erected are expensive and elegant, but are suggestive of New York rather than of London, only in New York the buildings seem better fitted for their purpose. From the point of view of an architect seeking to make the most of his opportunity, there is, I should say, too much wasted space and too much utterly meaningless decoration. Who does not know Liberty's? A shop for several generations famous for household art goods and silks and satins of exquisite texture and lovely color. On the right side of Regent Street going toward Oxford Street, there are several Liberty shops which will be replaced by new and presumably magnificent premises; but Messrs. Liberty are now engaged upon a project in Argyll Place, in the rear of one of their present locations, where they are erecting what seems to me to be the most beautiful structure now building in London. It is Tudor in design, of timber and concrete; in appearance not unlike the old Staple Inn in Holborn. The heavy timber work, the overhanging gables and the window frames are made from oak timbers from old battleships which once formed the wooden walls of England. There are ten gables of different elevations and on different planes on the Argyll Place front, and a

mass of handsomely wrought chimneys break up the roof line which is five stories above the street. Had this old world structure been placed conspicuously, on Regent Street for example, it would have been horrible, but in a bystreet one comes upon it with delight. I took the trouble to ascertain that Mr. E. Stanley Hall is the architect.

Oxford Street, too, has been almost entirely rebuilt, and easily the finest shop in this street is that of Gordon Selfridge, once of Marshall Field & Company of Chicago, now closely identified with the modernization of London. Without a doubt Mr. Selfridge has changed the character of shop building in London, of his quarter in particular. In Baker Street just around the corner great changes are taking place, and an effort is being made to make it a fashionable shopping-centre. The houses in this neighborhood, when originally built, were leased for a period of ninety-nine years; as they 'fall in' ('expire' would be our word) they are not renewed, but the buildings razed to make way for modern structures. An idea of the constant and rapid growth of London is suggested by a clause which the old leases contained restricting tenants from keeping pigs on the premises.

FOR MEN ONLY

As one looks in the windows of the tailor shops, and there are more such in London than anywhere else in the world, one is struck with the beauty of the cloths displayed in them. Exquisite in weave and color and style, one is powerless to resist the temptation to order one more suit. If you obey that impulse you are lost. Obsequiously the shopman listens while you tell him of the harrowing experiences you have had at the tailor's in the next street.

'It's too bad, sir,' he says; 'it makes

it 'ard for them has tries to please their customers. You shall have no difficulty like that with h'us, sir, h'I h'assure you, sir.' Seduced by a fine line of talk and beautiful cloth, and a low price,cloth suits are to-day the only cheap thing in England, you order a suit, being very explicit in your instructions. Will you get what you ask for? Not a bit of it. After the third trying-on, the suit, originally cut for a giant, begins to work down to within a few inches of your measure; that is to say, you can stuff only one large sofa cushion in the seat of your trousers, not two. Eventually, after several more 'fittings,' in disgust, or despair, or both, you pay for the suit, and have it sent to your hotel. Some weeks or months later, in the seclusion of your own room at home you put on the garments. This is what you find: the waistband of your trousers, which are cut heart-shape in the back as though they were intended to be worn conspicuously on St. Valentine's Day, is three inches too large; they are four inches too large in the leg; in them you look like a comic music-hall artist. They are several inches too short, while between vest and trousers there is a hiatus of an inch or more which reveals a strip of your shirt, or it may be that for variety's sake they come well up under your armpits.

Recently a new species of trousers has been introduced with pleats around the waist; but I cannot think that this 'maternity' type will long endure. The arms of your coat are too small; you smash your cuffs getting into it seemingly nothing fits anywhere. Then you begin to explore the pockets. How wonderful they would be were you a shoplifter by profession. In each of your coat pockets you could secrete a large dictionary: in your lower vest pockets you could carry away a nice supply of toilet articles. But hold!

here is a small pocket, two in fact, the upper vest pockets, which you insisted upon having made very narrow as you house in one only a narrow leather case containing your commutation ticket, and in the other a tiny cardcase or a lead pencil. These pockets have indeed been made narrow in accordance with your specifications; but only at the top: below they are so large that anything you put therein drops down and extends itself lengthwise, well out of reach. In the fob pocket of your trousers you can carry an extra large Waterbury clock, while in your hip pockets which, out of deference to your being an American, the cutter insists on calling 'pistol pockets'—you can conceal such weapons as are necessary only to a villain in a melodrama.

I am wearing at the moment of writing a fine new suit of black-andwhite check: I call it a 'certified check' to distinguish it from another suit which has been 'protested.' Now, would you believe it? the lining of the vest, the back of it, that is, is made not of the satin or fabric usually employed, but of the same check cloth as the front. The effect produced is that of a porous plaster. You have seen the advertisement, 'Feels good on the back'? Well, this does n't, and the straps that buckle together are so long that I invariably entangle myself in them in putting the garment on. I have in mind a number of shops in the West End, over the doors of which heraldic animals prance dangerously as though to imply protection to those within from the assaults of outraged customers. I mention no names, but I am preparing a confidential list which may be purchased for a small honorarium, and which will be found much more valuable than those letters to which you are subscribing which purport to tell you how to make money in Wall Street. And lest these remarks

are considered too sweeping, I would except the overcoat foundries of Studd and Millington in Conduit Street, famous for topcoats the world over.

II

Being in Conduit Street, let us call on my friend Mr. Maggs, the bookseller. There are two brothers, there were three, who tell me they have struggled hard to overcome their 'shyness': this is what an Englishman always calls his inability to come forward and grasp a man warmly by the hand and suggest, at least, that he is glad to see you, as Gabriel Wells does, for instance, when you call on him in New York. But if you are interested in fine books, you will do well to call on Maggs Brothers, and after you have broken the ice- and it won't be hard -you will see some things that will make your pocketbook look as though it had been stamped on by elephants. Two minutes' walk further west, and you will be looking into the window of the Dobells, who have moved their finer books from the rather sordid atmosphere of the Charing Cross Road. I would suggest that you enter and do not let Mr. Dobell's 'shyness' affect you. You will probably find some books that you can be happier with than without. Not far away in Grafton Street is Sawyer's, whose rise in the world has been rapid and deserved. No'shyness' about Mr. Sawyer; maybe you will be more successful than I have been in prying him loose from some of the finest Dickens items in existence. He boasts, so far as an Englishman can be said to boast, the finest Dickens collection in England. He says it is his private collection; but some day, when he gets ready, he will sell it. When I last saw him he had a wonderful copy of Pope's 'Essay on Man' - Pope's own, full of his notes, and very cheap.

While I was counting my money to see whether I could buy it and at the same time afford a steamer ticket home, Colonel Ralph Isham stepped in and carried it off. To quiet my anathemas he gave me a beautiful priced copy of the 'Sale Catalogue of Boswell's Library,' which will match up very nicely with my copy of the 'Sale Catalogue of Dr. Johnson's Library'; so I have something to show for my rage.

Quaritch is just next door: more 'shyness.' There is little to choose between Mr. Dring, the manager-inchief, and Mr. Ferguson, next in command. Both are men of profound knowledge of the old school of booksellers, who might be called scholars first and booksellers afterwards. If in a Quaritch book you see in pencil 'C & P,' signifying 'collated and perfect,' followed by Ferguson's initials, you need ask no questions: collated and perfect it is. Of late years 'Quaritch' has relaxed its austerity a little: you might possibly find there a first edition of Moby Dick, that great, great book which we are all now seeking; but you would be much more sure of getting there a first folio of Shakespeare or a King James Bible. Bookselling in London is a highly specialized trade.

Sabin's is in Bond Street, just around the corner; not many books now, but what there are, fine, very fine- and prints! The ease with which Sabin says 'two thousand,' when you ask the price, will amaze you; and when, to hide your confusion, you become facetious and say, 'dollars?' he hisses 'guineas' in a way that will teach you to respect a West-End tradesman. That extra shilling in the pound is a thing no American can ever get accustomed to. But I haven't the least doubt that Frank Sabin would gladly buy back from me every item I have had from him, and at a profit — to me. At 29 New Bond Street is the oldest