acts" of which she had spoken,
setting forth the true Buddhism, and mostly printed in Mandalay, and I
made a point of passing these on to some of the friends I had mentioned
to her.

I can only trust they were appreciated, and efficacious in reducing the
confusion resulting from trying to adapt Eastern mysticism to Western
consumption!

Our conversation became still more interesting when I discovered that a
mysterious fellow-passenger of ours on board the _Devonshire_, sailing
from Marseilles to Rangoon, had taken this voyage at the expense of the
Burmese lady, and, I am sorry to say, had occasioned her a great and
quite inexcusable disappointment.

This man, whom I will call Dr Groene, was a professor at a celebrated
university in the south of Europe, and was certainly a scholar--if not a
gentleman!

He had studied the Buddhist writings very deeply, and his name had been
conveyed to this Burmese lady as that of one eager to throw off all ties
of kinship, and retire--like the great Buddha himself--from the world,
and find repose and enlightenment in a Burmese monastery. The only thing
lacking in carrying out this excellent resolve was--as usual--_money_.

The native lady, delighted to hear of so learned a gentleman, and one
holding such an honourable position in Europe, being converted to the
tenets of her religion, and thus wishing to give the best example of
their influence upon him, agreed joyfully to forward the funds for his
journey and to make arrangements for his stay in Rangoon before
proceeding to Mandalay, where he was to be received as a Buddhist priest
after a certain course of initiation.

We had all remarked Dr Groene on board--partly because he was so thin and
tall, and walked the deck so persistently in fine weather or foul;
partly because he owned an exceptionally fine and long beard, which
parted and waved in the breeze as he passed to and fro in his lonely
perambulations. I never saw him speak to anyone on board except my own
table companion, Dr Gall, the Secretary of the Church Missionary
Society, and a very interesting and intelligent man. This latter was
also a distinguished Arabic scholar, and had lent me some striking
monographs he had written on the Mohammedan faith, striking both by the
scholarship and breadth of view and tolerance, which one does not
generally associate with the Society that he represented.

I had seen him more than once in the company of Dr Groene, and when we
reache