a

ful sufferer that the cure, and every- "It is not with money the man thing else, was entirely due to the spell would buy, Huzoor,” said he. “He cast upon the medicine water by the has living things to lay at the feet of sahib. Thenceforward scores of suf- the sahib, and his quest of the bulbul ferers flocked our way, mostly with is concerned with a sick child." fever or other simple ailments, but I bade Chidi Khan bring in the some with diseases about which I knew stranger and let him tell his own tale. nothing. All came ostensibly to see The man came in, and salaamed the bulbuls. Then they tarried for decorously. the sahib, if he were not at home, and He wanted a bulbul, for which he on his return told him of their ailments was ready to hand over, on the spot, as mere side issues.

one small bear cub, two wolf cubs, and Thus it happened that the bulbuls one kitten of a civet-cat, all rare creadrew more misery to my door than I tures, all fresh and genuine, that he had even imagined to exist in the had procured at some trouble and exjungle. Yet, somehow, while the work pense. Furthermore, did the sahib so was at hand and cost so little to do, it require, he would send to his brother, seemed out of reason to blame the who was in service with the dewan, or birds for bringing it.

minister of finance, to his highness the Matters were thus progressing when Rajah of Faridkot, in the Punjab, one day a stranger from afar off came where peacocks, chetahs, and gazelles to the camp. He was one of a party abounded, and would procure thence of four that were tarrying in the young chetahs, peacocks, or gazelles, shade of the big banian-tree in the hol- if only the sahib would present his son low, half a mile away. He was a with a bulbul. Hindu. Therefore, of all my servants "But," I protested, "bulbuls are he had approached Narain Singh, who common all over the country. You was of Brahman caste and greatly to can get them anywhere for a few annas be respected, and had confided in him apiece. Why offer me the value of a his mission.

hundred bulbuls for one of mine?" But as that mission concerned my Then the murder came out. bulbuls, Narain Singh had passed him “At Baidjanath, where we were on a on to Chidi Khan. Chidi Khan came pilgrimage,” he explained, "men said

. to me, his gray beard bristling with there was a sahib in these jungles who indignation.

had bulbuls wherewith miracles were “Huzoor,” said he, “this Kafir would wrought. I have seen the doctors of buy a bulbul of the presence!"

the sahibs and the Hindu doctors. This was an unusual audacity. They say my son cannot be cured.

“But, Chidi Khan," I expostulated, He is in his seventh year, and is the "why come to me with such parleying? pearl of my heart. He has heard the You know they are not for sale.” men talk of the sahib and his bulbuls,

Narain Singh, one of the finest fel- and he begs for one, believing that a lows that ever came out of the eternal miracle

miracle may befall." hills, and the only one that was ever as I went down to the banian-tree, near to me as Chidi Khan, begged where there were two other men and a leave to explain.

woman, and a boy of seven with a

a

hopeless enlargement of the spleen. uniformed figure of a government chuHe had big eyes and a clever face, prassy, or messenger, could be seen and he looked up at me with pitiful hurrying up the jungle trail. His expectancy.

brass badge and red pugree showed "It is unfortunate that you brought that he had come from the telegraph the cubs and the civet-cat," said I to office a hundred miles away. Salaamthe man, “because I can find no place ing profoundly, he handed me the for them just now; but your boy shall drab-colored despatch. have his bulbul, and I wish him all What matters the import thereof, health and fortune."

save that it scattered all thoughts of So I gave them one of the bulbuls, mines and Santhals and bulbuls, and and presently they proceeded on their called me imperatively overseas? But way. I hope the bird worked the India is a land of long and sudden miracle desired by the father and the partings, where one learns to expect the sufferer, but I greatly doubt it. unexpected, and for the unexpected

Poor old Chidi Khan was sorely dis- always to be prepared. Ofttimes such consolate over my charity.

messages as I received come thus in "It is bad luck, Huzoor,” said he, drab despatches. Ofttimes they come with a solemn shake of his turbaned otherwise, hurriedly, unseen, and somehead; "it is bad luck."

body digs a grave. Always some And subsequent events seemed to neighbor, near by or forty miles off, bear out the old Peshawari's presenti- steps in to settle matters and be kind, ments. About a week later, of a sul- well knowing the plight may be his try evening, I was watching while the own to-morrow. old fellow gathered in the bulbuls. So I sent a messenger, hot-foot, to

As he was chasing after the last of my neighbor, bidding him to come and the twittering rascals, the Rampur take my bulbuls and otherwise attend hound that customarily sat by my to some affairs. chair when I was in residence bounded To catch the steamer at Bombay, I up from his resting-place and gave should leave at latest before noon on tongue. On the instant all the other the morrow. Two hours before dawn dogs started baying or barking. It my neighbor came, and we drank to was rarely that a stranger came toward our merry parting. The sun was overthe camp in the later afternoon, so head when I kissed good-by to eight everybody was at once on the lookout. uncomprehending bulbuls, and set

Presently, piloted by a Santhal, the forth on my journey to the sea.

At Home in the Modern World

By GILBERT MURRAY

HE following is a condensed But this well-charted and under

version of Professor Mur- standable universe of the ancients ray's recent presidential ad- was shattered by scientific discovery. dress, “Orbis Terrarum.” Along came Copernicus and Galileo

The address, as delivered, was with the idea that the earth was not replete with classical reference and the center of the universe, but only one historical illumination. Space econ- of its minor planets. If the earth was omy has dictated the condensation not the physical center of the universe, that makes possible the presentation of half of the comfortable world of the Professor Murray's stimulating reflec- ancients was gone, and it made it tions in this issue of THE CENTURY more difficult to cling to the other MAGAZINE. But it would be unfair half, namely, that man was the moral both to Professor Murray and to the center of the universe. Thus did reader to omit an introductory sug- scientific discovery rob our ancestors gestion of the background against of their well-charted and intelligible which the ideas here presented were world and cast them naked into an thrown.

uncharted and baffling immensity. The ancients, according to Professor They could no longer feel at home Murray, lived in a “delightfully clear in their world as they had before. and definite and intellectually man- Here Professor Murray finds the ageable" universe. The ancients felt point of departure for his argument. at home in their world, because they He asserts that within recent times a conceived the universe as "one great change has taken place in our attitude city of gods and men, a conception toward the earth which is the exact opthat dominated the ethics, religion, posite of the change in our ancestors' and political theory of the Roman attitude toward the whole universe. Empire. They conceived the earth For them scientific discovery shattered as the physical center and man as the a world which they thought of as commoral center of the universe. “In pact and understandable, and they such a world,” says Professor Murray, had to readjust themselves to a new “it was comparatively easy for man world of unexplored and mysterious to see his own place and his neighbor's vastness. But for us the progress of sciplace, to realize their common duty, ence, the sweep of exploration, and the and to contemplate with confidence development of transportation have rather than terror the before and after shrunk the world into a well-charted of his conscious life.” For centuries and easily accessible neighborhood. man held in his hands a chart of the Once again it is becoming possible for world that gave him assurance and man to think of the world as “one comfort.

great city." This time the conception

a

of the world as “one great city" can of Christ; outside were Jews and infirest upon established fact, not upon dels, whose ways no one could underfallacious theory, as with the ancients. stand or wished to understand. Professor Murray is here concerned, Of course it would be absurd to therefore, with the most vital problem pretend that there was only one preof our time-the problem that under- cinct with a sharp edge, outside of lies alike politics, trade, and education: which were only the rejected. There How shall we adjust ourselves to this were always, no doubt, several; now new world that has become known there are very many precincts indeed, and neighborly, not to our own little and they shade insensibly one into fenced-in areas, but to the whole another. But this multiplication of world, Orbis Terrarum?—THE EDITOR. minor precincts is, I think, the way

in which the original primitive barrier

breaks down. Not so very long ago We are becoming at home in the a man in England who trespassed world. If you look back in history outside the bounds of his native village you will find at every epoch or in every had to blow a horn as he went to give society that there is a sort of precinct, fair warning, unless he wished to be some limited area, within which the killed at sight. world is understood or at least under- As that sharp barrier breaks and a standable, and outside of which rage man obtains knowledge of the next the unknown heathen. There is the village, the next county, then of people Hellenic world, within which there are who speak a different language, wear doubtless many wicked and hateful different clothes, have a different persons; but still they are Hellenes, religion or a different color to their and have customs upon which you skin, there may remain plenty of can calculate. Their speech may be conscious differences and repugnances; unintelligible to you, but at least it is but, with thoughtful men at least, a proper language. Outside are the there will not come a definite line barbaroi, making noises like birds and beyond which are outlaws, between capable of anything. Many of them, whom and yourself there are no human no doubt, are very wise and virtuous, bonds and no moral obligation. but somehow not ever people that you The essential mark of the foreigner can be at home with. A philosopher

A philosopher as such, of the barbarians, of the healike Plato tries to humanize the usages then, is a difference which is not of war; a publicist like Isocrates tries understood and does not explain itself. to establish a general international I remember, as a boy, loathing a cerconcord. But both of them stop at tain man, a Frenchman, who had a the limits of the Hellenic world, and particular kind of pouch under his eyes. know that for practical purposes it is It seemed to me to connote some no good talking about such things with indescribable wickedness. Then some barbarians. To the men of the Mid- one told me that it was a swelling of dle Ages the precinct was Christen- the lacrymal gland produced by exdom; within reigned, ideally at least, posure to a tropical sun, and I loathed though subject to many allowances him no more. It is generally some for the difficulties of real life, the law superficial and harmless characteristic

are

in a foreigner that, in literature, is min outside, than there have been for seized upon as a ground for shuddering a great many centuries. In mere at him. But with increased knowledge pig-headed, bestial rejection of the of the world we get to see the reasons foreigner this country and most others for the differences of custom, and they have of late sometimes sunk to a cease to be upsetting.

point of degradation which would It is the same with physical char- tempt our more enlightened ancestors acteristics. Europeans often to disown us if they knew of it. aware of the smell of negroes, and dis- That may be true enough. It is of like negroes accordingly. But a very course due to the war. The strain of little anthropology teaches us that all being allies in a long war is generally human beings smell. We may find, as more than human nature can supa friend of mine did, that a Japanese port. And though the contrary strain waiting-maid is apt to fall in a faint of being official enemies tends, in the at the smell of a number of Europeans actual fighter, to produce a reaction and Americans sitting at dinner. of kindliness, still, the sufferings and That alters the state of the case. cruelties of this last war were so far When knowledge and understanding beyond common anticipation that they come in, the peculiar sense of hor- have left a legacy of hate behind them. ror connected with the unknown

unknown This condition, I would say, is altovanishes.

gether exceptional and will pass. Yet Observe, it is not a question of that answer to my supposed critic is hating and loving. All really vigor- not sufficient. For the fact is that ous hatred is directed toward your inter-racial contempt and dislike were, neighbors, relatives, and rivals whom on the whole, growing and not diminyou know and constantly rub against; ishing in the century or century and a and the same is true of vigorous affec- half before the war. tion. We are considering now merely Think of Sir Joshua Reynolds's the question of a precinct, a fenced- noble picture of the Prince of Otaheite, in area, within which the moral law and compare it with our conception of holds, and an outer darkness in which a South-Sea islander to-day. Think it simply does not. It is that fence of the romance and majesty with which, I think, our increase of geo- which the medieval travelers endow graphical knowledge has, I will not the rulers of Cathay or the Indies, and say merely broken down, but, as far the respect, almost amounting to awe, as human beings are concerned, re- with which they speak of Arabian moved off the edges of the map of the science. Think of the romantic poems world.

written in the eighteenth century

about African princes treacherously $ 2

enslaved. Or, to throw one specific At this point a critic may suggest instance into contrast with our present certain facts which seem to give to my attitude, consider on the one hand the reasoning the lie direct. At the pres- eloquent pages about Africa in Condorent moment there are more precincts cet's famous little book, "Esquisse or ring fences set up in the world, with d’un tableau historique des progrès fellow-creatures inside and mere ver- de l'esprit humain," written in the