In the cone pagoda there were people praying on the floor, and it was ringed with little bronze Buddhas and big wooden Buddhas, standing, sitting, and lying, that all smiled, three hundred identical smiles. Then I came out beyond to a small temple on a mound, a sort of pointed roof on a circle of lacquer pillars. A yellow-robed man sat on the floor, with right shoulder bare, leaning against a pillar. A woman stood in front of him, talking fast. Three children were playing on the grass. You could look over the wall, and see the shuffling crowd in the streets, and those going up and down the stairway to the Shway Dagohn. The yellow robe was smoking a pipe. Moreover he was Sadler.
The woman stared at me and scuttled away, and I says, “How's business? How's the dyspeptic soul?”
“Business good,” he says. “Dyspeptic's took a pill. Sit down, Tommy. Glad to see you.” Those were his remarks, and it didn't look as if the East had swallowed him, except that he was remarkable calm, and his head was shaved, and his clothes didn't seem proper on a white man.
Then bit by bit, he unloaded his mind, which appeared full of little things, like a junk shop. He says: “See that woman that left?” he says. “She has four children, all girls, and she's mad over it. Around here, when a woman's going to have a child, she generally puts in a bid at the temple for a boy. Queer, ain't it! Well, that one has had four girls. Every time she comes around afterwards and lays down the law. Sometimes she brings her man, and they both lay down the law. Well, it's lively! That one on the left,” he says, pointing to the children, “that's Nan, proper name Ananda. She's one of their four. She's got the nerve of a horsefly! The chunky one in the middle, his name's Sokai, but I call him Soaker for short. His folks work in the rice fields. The littlest one's Kishatriya, which I call him Kiyi on account of his solemnness. Seemed to me it ought to cheer things up, to call him Kiyi. His folks died of cholera. He keeps meditatin' all the time.
“Business,” he says. “Oh! Fu Shan—Lum Shan. Why. Yes! Saleratus!” He seemed to have trouble getting his mind to those long-past things. I says, “Fu Shan introduced you to his brother, didn't he?”
“Why, Fu Shan gave me a letter. You remember that? Well, as I recollect, it turned out this way. Lum Shan, he just says, 'All light,' and lit out. All there was to it. He left me kind of surprised. I thought, 'There must be some poison around here,' but there wasn't. But it don't suit him. Then I looked up the title to the temple. Old Lo Tsin had got it recorded in the English courts in '53, when they annexed the town, and the title appeared to be good. I investigated some more. There were twenty yellow monks teaching school here. There's forty now. I got 'em in. But they appeared to think Lum Shan, or me, was a sort financial manager, that managed affairs mysterious. They said, 'Why should the holy be troubled? All things are one.' I thought they were pretty near right there, but I didn't see any advantage in it. I thought it was an all-round discouragin' statement. It was the oneness of things that was tiresome. I strolled around and thought it over. Then I says: 'Lend me one of them robes.' 'But,' says they, 'it is the garment of the phongyee. You are not a holy one.' 'Think not?' I says. 'Right again. Any kind of a blanket will do.'
“They gave me a blue cotton sheet, and recommended I go and sit three or four weeks in the pagoda, and consider that 'All things are one.' I says, 'All right,' I squatted every day before them bronze or wooden individuals, and remarked to each one some fifty times a day, 'All things are one,' till it seemed to me every one of 'em was thinking that identical thing too, and every one of 'em had the same identical and balmy smile over it. 'Take it on the whole,' I says, 'that's a singular coincidence, ain't it?' After three or four weeks I says, 'All things are one,' and felt about it the same way as they looked. There was no getting away from the amiableness of 'em. Then I says: 'How's this? Is monotony a benefit? Is enterprise a mistake? Is the Caucasian followin' up a blind trail? What's up?' I says.
“Then I went out and strolled around. A lot of yellow monks live over the west wall, and pass the time, meditatin' on selected subjects and teachin' school. Monks, now, are the mildest lot of old ladies out. The institution furnishes two meals a day, and they all go into the city mornings with begging bowls to give people a chance to acquire merit by charity. Then they come back and give away what they've collected to poverty that's collected at the gate. That way they acquire merit for themselves. Economical, ain't it? Then I saw how old Lo Tsin felt. He admired the economy of it anyway. I guess he admired it all around. He stood pat by his own temple, and then got himself buried there. The thing give him a soft spot on the head.
“Now, they think I'm a sort of an abbot, and folks come in from everywhere to show me a cut finger and discuss their sinfulness, and if Nan's mother ain't mad because the temple keeps puttin' her off with girls, then Kiyi's got the fever and chills, or somethin' else is goin' on. Always something to worry about. But a man can go over to the Pagoda, and tell 'em 'All things are one,' and get three hundred identical opinions to agree with. Cheers you up remarkable. Look at Kiyi! Ain't he great?”
Sadler went on in this way unloading his mind of odds and ends. Down on the slope below Nan was thumping Soaker on the back to make him mind her. She wore a striped cloth and a string of beads for her clothes. Laying down the law appeared to run in her family. Soaker took his thumping in a way that I judged it was a custom between them. Little Kiyi crept up the steps and squatted on the stone floor in front of us. He had a big head, and arms and legs like dry reeds. He sat, solemn and still, while Sadler was unloading his mind, and it seemed to me that Kiyi was mysterious, same as the bronze Buddhas in the cone pagoda.