I can only trust they were appreciated, and efficacious in reducing the confusion resulting from trying to adapt Eastern mysticism to Western consumption!
Our conversation became still more interesting when I discovered that a mysterious fellow-passenger of ours on board the _Devonshire_, sailing from Marseilles to Rangoon, had taken this voyage at the expense of the Burmese lady, and, I am sorry to say, had occasioned her a great and quite inexcusable disappointment.
This man, whom I will call Dr Gröne, was a professor at a celebrated university in the south of Europe, and was certainly a scholar--if not a gentleman!
He had studied the Buddhist writings very deeply, and his name had been conveyed to this Burmese lady as that of one eager to throw off all ties of kinship, and retire--like the great Buddha himself--from the world, and find repose and enlightenment in a Burmese monastery. The only thing lacking in carrying out this excellent resolve was--as usual--_money_.
The native lady, delighted to hear of so learned a gentleman, and one holding such an honourable position in Europe, being converted to the tenets of her religion, and thus wishing to give the best example of their influence upon him, agreed joyfully to forward the funds for his journey and to make arrangements for his stay in Rangoon before proceeding to Mandalay, where he was to be received as a Buddhist priest after a certain course of initiation.
We had all remarked Dr Gröne on board--partly because he was so thin and tall, and walked the deck so persistently in fine weather or foul; partly because he owned an exceptionally fine and long beard, which parted and waved in the breeze as he passed to and fro in his lonely perambulations. I never saw him speak to anyone on board except my own table companion, Dr Gall, the Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, and a very interesting and intelligent man. This latter was also a distinguished Arabic scholar, and had lent me some striking monographs he had written on the Mohammedan faith, striking both by the scholarship and breadth of view and tolerance, which one does not generally associate with the Society that he represented.
I had seen him more than once in the company of Dr Gröne, and when we reached Colombo, and read in the papers handed to us on broad that our ship contained the famous European professor who was journeying to Mandalay to become a Buddhist priest, after a touching farewell with wife and children, Dr Gall expressed both astonishment and incredulity.