experience.

Most nations, I suppose, look upon the dances of other nations with a
certain perplexity. Such glimpses, for example, as I had in America of
the movement known as the Shimmie Shake filled me with alarm, while
Orientals have been known to display boredom at the Russian Ballet.
Personally I adore the Russian Ballet, but I found the Nautch very
fatiguing. It is at once too long and too monotonous, but I dare say
that if one could follow the words of the accompanying songs, or
cantillations, the result might be more entertaining. That would not,
however, improve the actual dancing, in which I was disappointed. In
Japan, on the other hand, I succumbed completely to the odd, hypnotic
mechanism of the Geisha, the accompaniments to which are more varied, or
more acceptable to my ear, than the Indian music. But I shall always
remember the sounds of the distant, approaching or receding, snake-
charmers' piping, heard through the heat, as it so often is on Sundays
in Calcutta. To my inward ear that is India's typical melody; and it has
relationship to the Punch and Judy allurement of our childhood.

It was in Bombay that I saw my first fakir, and in Harrison Road,
Calcutta, my last. There had been so long a series in between that I was
able to confirm my first impression. I can now, therefore, generalise
safely when saying that all these strange creatures resemble a blend of
Tolstoi and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Imagine such a hybrid, naked save for a
loin cloth, and smeared all over with dust, and you have a holy man in
the East. The Harrison Road fakir, who passed on his way along the
crowded pavement unconcerned and practically unobserved, was white with
ashes and was beating a piece of iron as a wayward child might be doing.
He was followed by a boy, but no effort was made to collect alms. It is
true philosophy to be prepared to live in such a state of simplicity.