ed up another man who was full
of figures, and into my ears he poured them as occasion required or the
big blank factories suggested. Here they turned out so many hundred
thousand dollars' worth of such and such an article; there so many
million other things; this house was worth so many million dollars; that
one so many million more or less. It was like listening to a child
babbling of its hoard of shells. It was like watching a fool playing
with buttons. But I was expected to do more than listen or watch. He
demanded that I should admire; and the utmost that I could say was: "Are
these things so? Then I am very sorry for you." That made him angry, and
he said that insular envy made me unresponsive. So, you see, I could not
make him understand.

About four and a half hours after Adam was turned out of the garden of
Eden he felt hungry, and so, bidding Eve take care that her head was not
broken by the descending fruit, shinned up a cocoanut palm. That hurt
his legs, cut his breast, and made him breathe heavily, and Eve was
tormented with fear lest her lord should miss his footing and so bring
the tragedy of this world to an end ere the curtain had fairly risen.
Had I met Adam then, I should have been sorry for him. To-day I find
eleven hundred thousand of his sons just as far advanced as their father
in the art of getting food, and immeasurably inferior to him in that
they think that their palm-trees lead straight to the skies.
Consequently I am sorry in rather more than a million different ways. In
our East bread comes naturally even to the poorest by a little
scratching or the gift of a friend not quite so poor. In less favoured
countries one is apt to forget. Then I went to bed. And that was on a
Saturday night.

Sunday brought me the queerest experience of all--a revelation of
barbarism complete. I found a place that was officially described as a
church. It was a circus really, but that the worshippers did not know.
There were flowers all about the building, which was fitted up with
plush and stained oak and much luxury, including twisted brass
candlesticks of severest Gothic design. To these things, and a
congregation of savages, entered suddenly a wonderful man completely in
the confidence of their God, whom he treated colloquially and exploited
very much as a newspaper reporter would exploit a foreign potentate.
But, unlike the newspaper reporter, he never allowed his listeners to
forget that he and not He was