One
of the yellow robes recited a monotonous chant. Maybe it was a
funeral service, or maybe they were going over their law and gospels
for the benefit of Sadler. He looked up, and the reciter stopped, and
it was all quiet. Sadler says:
"See here, boys, what's the use? They can't make an Oriental of me.
This ain't right, Tommy. Now, is it? No, it ain't right." He looked
old and weighted down. He looked as old as a pyramid. "See here," he
says, "Tommy, what's the idea of this?"
Then we backed out of that assembly. Seemed to me it was a
proposition a man might as well dodge. Only, I recollect how little
Kiyi looked like a wisp of dry hay, and Sadler uncommon large, with
his fists on the stone floor on either side, and his head hung over
Kiyi, and how the yellow men squatted and said nothing.
Maybe Sadler is studying the "Kiyi Proposition," still, to find out
how the three hundred bronze Buddhas can give three hundred cheerful
agreements to the statement that "All things are one," when, on the
contrary, some things have Kiyi luck and some don't. I don't know.
The rights and wrongs of this world always seemed to me pretty
complicated. There was Julius R.
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