Thus religions when mixed with education have a paralysing effect. I have often heard this said in Burma. Here is a conversation I once had at a village I knew very well. It occurred, as did most of the talks I had with the people, just after sunset, when I had my chair set outside my rest-house, and the people came dropping in to gossip. There were a number of people, the headman, elders, their wives and children, and two monks from a neighbouring monastery. They talked quite freely because they knew that after office hours I forgot I was an official, or even an Englishman, and just talked to them as one human being to another. I may add that I had been inspecting the village school where little boys and girls learned together. I had also been to a monastery where the elder boys went. "Well," I said, "what is the news?" There was an expectant silence. Evidently there was some news; the question was--who should tell it? "What is it, Headman?" I asked. The Headman rubbed an ankle reflectively. "The fact is," he answered, "there is no news that would interest your Honour; only just village doings, foolish doings." "Hum," I said; "that sounds to me as if a young man had been doing something." Several of the men smiled--"Possibly with the assistance of a girl"--and I glanced at some girls. They giggled, and the Headman said briefly: "Maung Ka's son has run off with a girl." "Oh!" I said, turning to Maung Ka, whom I knew well enough--a tall, fine-looking man, who was looking very gloomy. "It's a way boys have. There's no harm in it." "Not if he can support her afterwards," said Maung Ka gruffly. "Can't he do that?" I asked. It appeared he couldn't. He had spent all his boyhood in a monastery "learning" till his father fetched him out. Then he went to the other extreme and levanted with a girl. "He doesn't know one end of a bullock from the other," said the father; "he can't plough or sow; he can't work; he has no common sense. That's what schooling does for a boy." Most of the other men agreed with him, and we had a discussion on education, in which everyone took part. The general opinion was that schooling should be to fit you for life. The monks said for eternity, but the villagers--though out of respect for the monks they said little--evidently didn't make any such distinction. What wasn't fit for time wasn't fit for eternity. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were good, because a boy needed these. Beyond that they seemed to think schooling did harm. A boy learned more from his father and the other villagers than from school. As to a girl, "What," asked an elder indignantly, "is the use of a girl learning to write? What will she write? Love-letters only." "Well," I asked, "and isn't that good--for the boy who gets them?"