faiths paid visits to America from India and Ceylon in connection with the Parliament of Religions at Chicago. After this Vedanta Societies were started in New York, San Francisco, Los Angelos and other cities where some colleagues of Swami Vivekananda have been teaching Vedanta to the American people.

Formerly students from India usually went to Great Britain for the prosecution of their studies, but at the time when I was in the States several Indian students were studying Agriculture, Engineering and other technical subjects in America and Japan. Some were scholars of the Government of Bengal, of the Association for the Advancement of Scientific and Industrial Education of Indians, and of Baroda, Mysore and other Indian States. Others were selfsupporting, and maintained themselves and defrayed their college expenses like many American and Japanese students by waiting on tables, by working in farms, and by various other kinds of manual labour in their spare times and during the summer holidays. It was indeed quite hard for Indian students of

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respectable families and high castes to take recourse to menial work which they were not accustomed to in India. But the spirit of self-help and democracy which was engendered in them is a great gain and acquisition both to them and to their country, and thoroughly equips them for the struggle for existence in advanced life. In recent times students from the Indian aristocracy also joined American universities instead of going to Oxford and Cambridge. A son of His Highness the Maharaja of Baroda was a student of Harvard, and Maharajkumar Victor N. Narayan of Cooch Behar a student of Cornell.

Blessed is the country which has produced statesmen like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln; philosophers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James; self-made men like Benjamin Franklin, James Garfield and Booker T. Washington; orators like Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan; political thinkers like Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson; humorists like Washington Irving and Mark Twain; and scientists like

Thomas Edison and Graham Bell. Blessed are the people who in the course of only four hundred years converted a continent from the state of wilderness into a conglomeration of flourishing cities and ports, and who although the youngest of nations have now come to the fore-front in wealth, in knowledge, and in power. The light of civilisation rose in the east, then slowly travelled to the west, and is now coming back reflected to the east. The larger the number of Indian students going to America to have their visions enlarged and to have themselves thoroughly equipped for service to India, the more will be the gain to our mother country.

CHAPTER XIII.

REMINISCENCES OF A DEAD TOWN.

The silent clock-"Dis is plain watah, sah"-More spittoons than chairs-The man in the lobby-Tobacco as perfume-"Yes, sir-r-r"—Wonderful faculty of hiding genius-Only flies and frogs alive in the dead town -Yellow pigment manufactured in the mouth factories.

The area of the United States is two times and a half that of India, and the population is about a hundred millions. It is not, therefore, proper to expect that the conditions would be the same everywhere, and that even the remote regions of the country would show a high standard of perfection. In this chapter I shall narrate my reminiscences of a very small town in the undeveloped regions of the States, where I had to go on business. In America the Quaker City of Philadelphia is called a 'dead city' on account of its dullness. I never visited Philadelphia, but the small place which I visited appeared to me to be quite a dead

town, in contrast with the great centres of activities which I had left behind.

There was no din or tumult of traffic, no sound of electric cars, no incessant rattle of carriages and automobiles as in big cities and towns. It was about midday. There was a clock in the drawing room of the hotel where I stayed; I looked at it, the hands indicated half-past six; apparently they did not move. Everything in that dead town was dead-quiet; and so the clock in harmony with the general silence did not tick.

I proceeded to write a letter, but I found that the writing table was supported on three long legs and a short one. It was impossible for me to write and at the same time keep the table from shaking, so I laid down my pen in a spirit of resignation. Then I began to pace to and fro in the room, but the wooden floor began to shake from end to end. In my despair I took my seat in the chair again. It was a rocking chair,—at least it pretended to be one, but I sat still without venturing to indulge in the luxury of rocking, for there was