Chapter 55

There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been
squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbor.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

FROM DIARY:

February 14. We left at 4:30 P.M. Until dark we moved through rich
vegetation, then changed to a boat and crossed the Ganges.

February 15. Up with the sun. A brilliant morning, and frosty. A
double suit of flannels is found necessary. The plain is perfectly
level, and seems to stretch away and away and away, dimming and
softening, to the uttermost bounds of nowhere. What a soaring,
strenuous, gushing fountain spray of delicate greenery a bunch of bamboo
is! As far as the eye can reach, these grand vegetable geysers grace the
view, their spoutings refined to steam by distance. And there are fields
of bananas, with the sunshine glancing from the varnished surface of
their drooping vast leaves. And there are frequent groves of palm; and
an effective accent is given to the landscape by isolated individuals of
this picturesque family, towering, clean-stemmed, their plumes broken and
hanging ragged, Nature's imitation of an umbrella that has been out to
see what a cyclone is like and is trying not to look disappointed. And
everywhere through the soft morning vistas we glimpse the villages, the
countless villages, the myriad villages, thatched, built of clean new
matting, snuggling among grouped palms and sheaves of bamboo; villages,
villages, no end of villages, not three hundred yards apart, and dozens
and dozens of them in sight all the time; a mighty City, hundreds of
miles long, hundreds of miles broad, made all of villages, the biggest
city in the earth, and as populous as a European kingdom. I have seen no
such city as this before. And there is a continuously repeated and
replenished multitude of naked men in view on both sides and ahead. We
fly through it mile after mile, but still it is always there, on both
sides and ahead--brown-bodied, naked men and boys, plowing in the fields.
But not woman. In these two hours I have not seen a woman or a girl
working in the fields.

"From Greenland's icy mountains,
From India's coral strand,
Where Afric's sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand.
From many an ancient river,
From many a palmy plain,
They call us to deliver
Their land from error's chain."

Those are beautiful verses, and they have remained in my memory all my
life. But if the closing lines are true, let us hope that when we come
to answer the call and deliver the land from its errors, we shall secrete
from it some of our high-civilization ways, and at the same time borrow
some of its pagan ways to enrich our high system with. We have a right
to