“After all, famine blinds us, because we are here in the midst of it. It is hard to restrain one’s rebellion in the midst of Rydamphur’s dead, when one thinks that the Englishman spends for intoxicating drinks annually two-and-one-half-times what the Hindu individual spends for food, drink, fuel, clothing, medicine, recreation, education, and religion. It horrifies us little to think that at home they are spending on roaring Broadway, this very night, in dines and wines and steins, and kindred vanities and viciousness, enough to keep a million native mothers in milk for their babes a fortnight. If we could sit away up in the Hills so that all the world were in its proper relation and perspective, we might perceive something sanitive and less sodden in starvation, something less pestilential than the death of drink and gluttony. You know the soul burns bright at the end of much fasting.” The tall stranger had spoken mildly in the main, as if discussing matters of food before him. Only occasionally he leaned forward, his eyes lit with prophecy or rebellion. Mr. Jasper felt the animation of the other’s presence most remarkably. He had never met such a man, and said so with boyish impulsiveness. The other regarded him with genuine gratitude. “I was afraid that I had spoken too freely. One is inclined to be fluent in the thing he knows well. I do not mean to say that I know India, but only that I have studied India long. She has many facets, and at best one’s views are but one’s own.” Mr. Jasper offered his card. “I thank you,” said the stranger. “I am not carrying cards just now. My name matters little to any one, but I wish you a very good night.” The Syracuse manufacturer went to his room and sat in the dark under the punkahs, staring out the window and studying what he had heard. The saffron desert was ghostly gray under the brilliant low-hanging stars, and all objects were black and blotchy upon it. It made him think of paintings of Egyptian nights--paintings hung he could not remember where. He was troubled because the stranger withheld his name. Here was a man with whom he would have rejoiced to travel, to know better and better. The thought which recurred strongest out of all that he had heard was: “_All men, as all nations, must suffer._ Europe and America are learning to suffer through their excesses; India through her privations, a cleaner, holier way.”