y amusement.

"He has been many years in the country, but he still judges us as a
foreigner."

When I suggested that the judgment was at least very flattering to the
Burmese, this Burmese gentleman laughed, and said:

"Flattering? Yes--but not always quite true. One must see from _inside_,
not from outside, to be quite true in one's judgments; and no foreigner
can see from outside. It is a question of race and heredity, not of
having spent twenty or thirty years, or even a lifetime, in a foreign
land."

I suggested that those who saw from _inside_ only, might also lack some
essential factor in forming an accurate judgment.

He agreed heartily to this, adding: "Yes, indeed. The ideal critic must
have lived neither too near nor too far--mentally as well as physically;
also he must have intuition. Now Mr Fielding Hall is an artist as well
as a poet, but in judging my country he lets his intuition run riot
sometimes, as well as his imagination."

After reporting this conversation, it is unnecessary to add that my
Burmese friend spoke English rather better than I did myself.

We then talked about the position of woman in Burmah, and how much this
had been extolled and held up as a object lesson to the rest of the
world.

If the position of woman is the true test of a nation's civilisation, as
has been so often affirmed, then certainly Burmah must be in the van of
the nations! Yet this is scarcely borne out by facts.

I put this point as politely as I could, and my mind was at once set at
ease by the purely impersonal way in which he met my remark.

"Of course, we are not in the van of the nations, and yet it is quite
true that our women have an exceptional position--quite a good enough
one for an election cry for the Woman's Suffrage! Ah, yes! I have been
in England," he added, with a merry twinkle in his little black eyes.
"But you must realise that the unique position of woman with us is
somewhat accidental. It is not the result of philosophical or moral
conviction on the part of our men; it has been the natural outcome of
circumstances, and a question of expediency rather than of ethics. So it
was not really a 'test paper' for us at all! Our frequent wars in the
past have taken the men out of their homes, and the women, at such
times, were left alone to cope with not only the domestic, but the
agricultural problems. All business of this kind passed through their
hands, and in time they developed the qualities