Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/157

Rh humbug, and he gets through it as fast as he can, to see if he can give the benefit of his services to another credulous client soon after. And the devout layman! How does he offer prayers? He recites chapter after chapter of matter which he ought to read once in a way, which contains some excellent moral or philosophical dissertation, but which has as little of devotional merit as Gulliver's Travels! He does not understand a word of what he recites, and therefore he does so necessarily without any intelligent appreciation. He wastes from six to eight hours of his day under a mistaken sense of duty. What he wants is to thank his Creator for His mercies, and to beg of Him to continue these. Not knowing how to do it in language he can understand, he wades through his volume of bewildering phraseology containing learned discourses on matters astronomical, geological, metaphysical, moral, and social! Morning and evening he is haunted by visions of duty, and however oppressed at the prospect of the distasteful task before him, he gets through it with the patience of a martyr. But the attention, which is never wholly absorbed by such work, is apt to be disturbed and distracted. Hence it is