"That big green tree there," said she, "is like unto me when I was young and ignorant, rejoicing in earthly distinctions and affections; and then I am brought as a gift to a great king, and only think how grand and how rich I may become; and there you see that I am drooping and my leaves are all withering and begin to fall; here I am shattered and uprooted by a sense of sorrow and humiliation, drifting along an impetuous river, but by and by a little flower stops my downward course. That little flower is my child; he springs out of the very waters which threatened my destruction; and now he grows into a garden of flowers, to hide away from me that which would make me sad and sorrowful again; and now I am always glad."
After a little while, desirous of knowing what the glittering image of Buddha really was to her, I said kindly: "Sonn Klean, you were praying to that idol?"
She did not reply at once, but at length, laying her hand gently upon my arm, said: "Shall I say of you, dear friend, that you worship the ideal or image which you have of your God in your own mind, and not the God? Even so say not of me that I worship the golden image up there, but the Great One who sent me my teacher Buddha, that he might be the guide and the light of my life."
On another occasion when she read and translated the Sermon on the Mount, she suddenly exclaimed with great emotion: "O, your sacred P'hra Jesus is very beautiful! Let us promise one another that whenever you pray to P'hra Jesus you will call him Buddha, the Enlightened One; and I, when I pray to my Buddha, I will call him P'hra Jesu Karuna, the tender and sacred Jesus, for surely these are only different names for the one and the same God."
Her favorite book, however, was "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and she would read it over and over again, though she knew all the characters by heart, and spoke of them as if she had known them all her life.
On the 3d of January, 1867, she invited me to dinner, and she sent to me, in the course of the day, so many messages, telling me to be sure to come, that I began to suspect it was going to be a very grand entertainment. So I put on my best dress, and made myself as fine as I could.
My friend was looking down the street, with her head and shoulders out of her window, as we appeared, and the moment she saw us she rushed to greet us in her own sweet, cordial manner. Dinner was served in the study, for it boasted of one table and five chairs; but our party numbered six in all, so my boy and the Prince Kreta B'hiniharn were obliged to squeeze themselves into one chair, and then there was one apiece for the rest of us. We were served by Peguan slave-girls in the Peguan fashion, on little silver plates, the slave-girls kneeling around us. Fish, rice, jelly, and a variety of sweetmeats, came first, then different kinds of vegetables; after them a course of meat, venison, and birds of all kinds, and we finished with sweet drinks, preserves, and fruit.
When dinner was over, my friend, in concert with her sisters and slave-girls, performed on several musical instruments with wonderful effect. At last all Sonn Klean's slave-women with their children appeared in a group, one hundred and thirty-two in all, in nice new dresses, all looking particularly happy.
"I am wishful to be good like Harriet Beecher Stowe,"—or Stowâ, as my friend persisted in pronouncing that name,—"and never to buy human bodies again, but only to let go free once more, and so I have now no more slaves, but hired servants. I have given freedom to all of my slaves to go or to stay with me as they wish. If they go away to their homes, I am glad; if they stay with me, I am still more glad; and I will give them each four ticals every month after this day, with their food and clothes."
Thenceforth, to express her entire sympathy and affection for the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," she always signed herself Harriet Beecher Stowe; and her sweet voice trembled with love and music whenever she spoke of the lovely American lady who had taught her, "even as Buddha had once taught kings," to respect the rights of her fellow-creatures.