But it was not until after several suggestions and many conversations that light was found. The friend so pressingly appealed to returned to London, where he was stern in rejecting several projects, hotly flung at his head and then coldly abandoned. A study of the Empress Maria Theresa, suggested by a feverish perusal of Pechler, was the latest and least attractive of these. Lord Redesdale then frankly demanded that a subject should be found for him. “You have brought this upon yourself,” he said, “by encouraging me to write.” What might prove the scheme of a very pleasant book then occurred to us, and it was suggested to the fiery and impatient author, who had by this time retired for good to Batsford, that he should compose a volume of essays dealing with things in general, but bound together by a constantly repeated reference to his wild garden of bamboos and the Buddha in his secret grove. The author was to suppose himself seated with a friend on the terrace at the top of the garden, and to let the idea of the bamboo run through the whole tissue of reflections and reminiscences like an emerald thread. Lord Redesdale was enchanted, and the idea took fire at once. He replied: “You are Orpheus, with his lute moving the rocks and stones! I shall work all my conceits into your plan, and am now proceeding to my garden shrine to meditate on it. I will try to make a picture of the VELUVANA, the bamboo garden which was the first Vikara or monastery of Buddha and his disciples. There I will sit, and, looking on the great statue of Buddha in meditation, I shall begin to arrange all sorts of wild imaginings which may come into my crazy brain.” In this way was started the book, of which, alas! only such fragments were composed as form the earlier part of the present volume. It is, however, right to point out that for the too-brief remainder of his life Lord Redesdale was eagerly set on the scheme of which a hint has just been given. The _Veluvana_ was to be the crowning production of his literary life, and to sum up the wisdom of the East and the gaiety of the West. He spoke of it incessantly, in letters and conversation. “That will do to go into _Veluvana_,” was his cry when he met with anything rare or strange. For instance, on the 15th of September, 1915, he wrote to me: