omit it on these frosty mornings. While the mummery goes on in the temples, the babus and pundits, even those who have taken degrees in Western universities, insist that this worship is not idolatry, that these images of Vishnu, Shiva, Parvati, Krishna, Ganesha, and the rest, the stone bulls, the sacred cows, sacred wells, and sacred monkeys, are but symbols—symbols of the purest and simplest creed, of the noblest faith, the highest philosophy—a symbolism that the masses of course recognize. One has all of a Mohammedan's impatience and contempt for the puerilities, the grossness, the unreasonable imbecility of it all.
One remembers the Scala Santa in Rome, the scenes at Assisi and Lourdes, when he sees fakirs and fanatics making the rounds of all the shrines of Benares on their knees, and measuring with their bodies the fifty miles of sacred road that sweeps in a semicircle around the suburbs of the holy city of the Brahman's soul, known to the pious Hindu as Kasi the Magnificent—a city which rests, not on the earth, but on the point of Shiva's trident.
The bazaars of Benares, particularly the noisy brass bazaar, are picturesque in a general way, but the wares exposed are the coarsest and crudest that the debased taste and careless hand of the day can produce. Heavy, ill-shapen, vulgar brass pieces scratched over with thin and poor designs replace the deeply cut and finely chased brass-work that used to distinguish Benares. But the glint and glow and color of the base metal in its myriad forms make of the narrow street of brass-beaters' dens a long
