ows and
ascetic theologies would make them. No lean-jowled, hungry-looking
devotees, living in exiguity and droning in exinanition their
prayers,--not by any means. Their flesh-pots are not a few, and
their table is a marvel of ascetism! And why not, if their fat
estates--three-quarter of the lands here is held in mortmain by the
clergy--can yield anything, from silk cocoons to lime-pits? They
will clothe you in silk at least; they will lime-wash your homes and
sepulchres, if they cannot lime-wash anything else. Thanks to them
so long as they keep some reminiscence of business in their heads
to keep the Devil out of it.

The monk-foreman is reading with one eye and watching with the other.
"Work," cries he, "every minute wasted is stolen from the abbey. And
whoso steals, look in the pit: its fire is nothing compared with
Juhannam." And the argument serves its purpose. The labourers hurry
hither and thither, bringing brushwood near; the first stoker pitches
to the second, the second to the third, and he feeds the flaming,
smoking, coruscating volcano. "_Yallah!_" (Keep it up) exclaims the
monk-foreman. "Burn the devil's creed," cries one. "Burn hell," cries
another. And thus jesting in earnest, mightily working and enduring,
they burn the mountains into lime, they make the very rocks yield
somewhat.--Strength and blessings, brothers.

After the usual inquiry of whence and whither, his monkship offers the
snuff-box. "No? roll you, then, a cigarette," taking out a plush pouch
containing a mixture of the choicest native roots. These, we were
told, are grown on the monastery's estate. We speak of the cocoon
products of the season.

"Beshrew the mulberries!" exclaims the monk. "We are turning all our
estates into fruit orchards and orangeries. The cultivation of the
silk-worm is in itself an abomination. And while its income to-day is
not as much as it was ten years ago, the expenditure has risen
twofold. America is ruining our agriculture; and soon, I suppose, we
have to send to China for labourers. Why, those who do not emigrate
demand twice as much to-day for half the work they used to do five
years ago; and those who return from America strut about like country
gentlemen deploring the barrenness of their native soil."

And one subject leading to another, for our monk is a glib talker, we
come to the cheese-makers, the goatherds. "Even these honest rustics,"
says he, "are becoming sophisticated (_mafsudin_). Their che