of industry, good
judgment and power of taking responsibility, necessary for success in
such a life. Then when the husbands came back and found everything going
on so well and without trouble to themselves, they were only too glad to
fall in with the existing state of things. We Burmese are lazy fellows
after all. We can rise to a big call, but if our women will look after
our business for us, we are quite content to smoke our pipes in peace
and look on--and, of course, the one who makes the wheels go round is
the one who really drives the coach. Believe me, there is more of
expediency than nobility in the attitude of our men towards our women,
and more of laziness than either, perhaps! But Fielding Hall would call
this blasphemy, I am afraid!"

And so, with a joking word, our interesting talk came to an end, leaving
me with a sincere hope that I might some day meet again both the
intelligent husband and the charming wife.

I found the air at Simla quite marvellous for psychic possibilities,
and this was certainly a great surprise to me; nor was it only a
question of altitude and a dry atmosphere. Missouri and the Dhera Doon
are celebrated for the purity of air and climate generally, but the
influences there were quite different.

Even Peshawar, with its glorious crown of snow-capped mountains, brought
no special psychic atmosphere to me; nor the Khyber Pass, where I had
thoroughly expected to be haunted by the horrors of the past; nothing of
the kind occurred. The beauty of the day when we visited this historic
pass was only to be matched by its own extreme natural beauty; but no
haunting memories hung round it for me.

Perhaps a night passed in those rocky defiles might have brought some
weird experience, but no European would be allowed to woo adventure in
this way, even with the laudable desire for advance in psychological
phenomena! But I stayed there quite long enough to prove--for the
hundredth time--that _an attitude of expectation_ acts with me as a
deterrent rather than encouragement, where the Unseen is in question.

I had heard so much of Simla Society and Simla Scandals, and so little
of Simla Beauty and Loveliness!--in Nature, I mean--not Human Nature.

It is true we were there at the most exquisite time in the year, when
the air was still fresh and keen, when the last snows and the first
blooms of rhododendrons were greeting each other, when the long
stretches of valley, brown and purple and emerald