ne and blue sky at the
portals where the little children squabbled and shouted.

On my word, I tried to note down soberly what lay before me, but the eye
tired, and the pencil ran off into fragmentary ejaculations. But what
would you have done if you had seen what I saw when I went round the
temple verandah to what we must call a vestry at the back? It was a big
building connected with the main one by a wooden bridge of deepest
time-worn brown. Down the bridge ran a line of saffron-coloured matting,
and down the matting, very slowly and solemnly, as befitted their high
office, filed three and fifty priests, each one clad in at least four
garments of brocade, crepe, and silk. There were silks that do not see
the light of the markets, and brocades that only temple wardrobes know.

There was sea-green watered silk with golden dragons; terra-cotta crepe
with ivory-white chrysanthemums clustering upon it; black-barred silk
shot with yellow flames; lapis-lazuli silk and silver fishes; avanturine
silk with plaques of grey-green let in; cloth of gold over dragon's
blood; and saffron and brown silk stiff as a board with embroidery. We
returned to the temple now filled with the gorgeous robes. The little
lacquer stands were the priests' book-racks. Some lay down among them,
while others moved very softly about the golden altars and the
incense-burners; and the high priest disposed himself, with his back to
the congregation, in a golden chair through which his robe winked like
the shards of a tiger-beetle.

In solemn calm the books were unrolled, and the priests began chanting
Pali texts in honour of the Apostle of Unworldliness, who had written
that they were not to wear gold or mixed colours, or touch the precious
metals. But for a few unimportant accessories in the way of half-seen
images of great men--but these could have been called saints--the scene
before me might have been unrolled in a Roman Catholic cathedral, say
the rich one at Arundel. The same thought was in other minds, for in a
pause of the slow chant a voice behind me whispered:--

"To hear the blessed mutter of the mass
And see God made and eaten all day long."

It was a man from Hong-Kong, very angry that he too had not been
permitted to photograph an interior. He called all this splendour of
ritual and paraphernalia just "an interior," and revenged himself by
spitting Browning at it.

The chant quickened as the service drew to an end, and the cand