front. There was rice cooked in all sorts of
shapes, ordinary rice for eating with curry, and the sweet purple rice,
cooked in bamboos and coming out in sticks. There were vegetables, too,
of very many kinds, and sugar and cakes and oil and honey, and many
other such things. There were a few, very few, books, for they are very
hard to get, being all in manuscript; and there were one or two tapestry
curtains; but there were heaps of flowers. I remember there was one girl
whose whole offering was a few orchid sprays, and a little, very
little, heap of common rice. She was so poor; her father and mother were
dead, and she was not married. It was all she could give. She sat behind
her little offering, as did all the donors. And my gift? Well, although
an English official, I was not then very much richer than the people
about me, so my gift must be small, too--a tin of biscuits, a tin or two
of jam, a new pair of scissors. I did not sit behind them myself, but
gave them to the headman to put with his offerings; for the monks were
old friends of mine. Did I not live in one of their monasteries for over
two months when we first came and camped there with a cavalry squadron?
And if there is any merit in such little charity, as the Burmese say
there is, why should I not gain it, too? The monks said my present was
best of all, because it was so uncommon; and the biscuits, they said,
though they did not taste of much while you were eating them, had a very
pleasant after-taste that lasted a long time. They were like charity,
maybe: that has a pleasant after-taste, too, they tell me.

When all the presents, with the donors behind them, dressed all in their
best, were ready, the monks came. There were four monasteries near by,
and the monks, perhaps in all thirty, old and young, monks and novices,
came in one long procession, walking very slowly, with downcast eyes,
between the rows of gifts and givers. They did not look at them at all.
It is not proper for a monk to notice the gifts he receives; but
schoolboys who came along behind attending on them, they saw and made
remarks. Perhaps they saw the chance of some overflow of these good
things coming their way. 'See,' one nudged the other; 'honey--what a
lot! I can smell it, can't you?' And, '_My mother!_ what a lot of sweet
rice. Who gave that? Oh, I see, old U Hman.' 'I wonder what's in that
tin box?' remarked one as he passed my biscuits. 'I hope it's coming to
our monastery, any wa