Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/108

94 pillars. There sat a yellow-robed man on the floor, with right shoulder bare, leaning against a pillar. A woman stood in front of him, talking fast, and three children were playing in the grass. You could look over the wall and see the shuffling crowd in the street, and those going up and down the stairway to the Shway Dagohn. The yellow robe was smoking a pipe. Moreover, he was Gainly Jones.

"The woman stared at me, and scuttled away. I said, 'How's business and the dyspeptic soul?'

Business good; dyspeptic soul's took a pill. Squat; stretch; sit down. Glad to see you.'

"Those were his remarks, and it didn't look as if the East had swallowed him, except he was remarkable calm, and his head was shaved, and his clothes didn't seem proper on a white man.

"And then, slowly, bit by bit, he unloaded his mind, which appeared as full of little things as a junk-shop—bits of things like these:

See that woman that left? Well, she has four children, all girls, and she's bored with it. Around these parts, when a woman's going to have a child, she generally puts in a bid at the temple to make it a boy. Queer, ain't it? Well, that one has had four girls. Every time she comes around afterward and lays down the law. Sometimes she brings her man, and they both lay down the law. My, but it's lively! That one on the left,' pointing to the children, 'that's Nan—proper name Ananda; that's one of their four. She's got the nerve of a horse-fly, you bet! The chunky one in the middle, his name's Sokai, which I call him Soaker for short. His folks work in the ricefields when they ain't opium-drunk. The littlest one's Kishatriya, but I call Kiyi on account of his solemnness. Seems as if it ought to cheer him up to call him Kiyi. His folks died of cholera. Keeps meditating all the time, don't he? Business? Oh! Fu Shan—Lum Shan—Oh yes! Saleratus!'

"He puffed his pipe slowly, and told his story: 'Well, you see, Fu Shan gave me a letter. Well, Lum Shan read it. Then he says, "All light," and lights out. All there was to that. Left me kind of surprised. Thinks I, "Must be some poison around here." There wasn't. But it didn't suit him. Then I looked up the title to the temple. Blest if old Lo Tsin hadn't got it recorded in the English courts in '53, when they annexed the town! Title appeared to be good. I investigated some more. There were twenty yellow monks teaching school here. There's forty now; I