the bookcases themselves containing these treasures were supplied by a
well-known firm in the Tottenham Court Road.

A singularly intelligent young priest, speaking English perfectly,
showed me the most exquisitely illuminated old Chinese manuscripts, as
well as treatises in ten other Oriental languages, which only made me
deplore my ignorance, since I was unable to read a word of any of
them. The illuminations, though, struck me as fully equal to the
finest fourteenth-century European work in their extreme minuteness
and wonderful delicacy of detail. The young priest, whom I should
suspect of being what is termed in ecclesiastical circles "a spike,"
was evidently very familiar with the Liturgy of the Church of England,
but it came with somewhat of a shock to hear him apply to Buddha terms
which we are accustomed to use in a different connection.

The material prosperity of Ceylon is due to tea and rubber, and the
admirable Public Works of the colony, roads, bridges and railways,
seem to indicate that these two commodities produce a satisfactory
budget. During the Kandy cricket week young planters trooped into the
place by hundreds. Planters are divided locally into three categories:
the managers, "Peria Dorai," or "big masters," spoken of as "P. D.'s,"
the assistants, "Sinna Dorai," or "little masters," labelled
"S. D.'s," and the premium-pupils, known as "creepers."

Personally I am inclined to discredit the local legend that all male
children born of white parents in Ceylon come into the world with
abnormal strength of the right wrist, and a slight inherited callosity
of the left elbow. This is supposed to be due to their parents having
rested their left elbows on bar-counters for so many hours of their
lives; the development of the right wrist being attributed in the same