The facility for divorce has other effects too. It makes a man and a woman very careful in their behaviour to each other. The chain that binds them is a chain of mutual forbearance, of mutual endurance, of mutual love; and if these be broken, then is the bond gone. Marriage is no fetter about a man or woman, binding both to that which they may get to hate. In the first Burmese war in 1825 there was a man, an Englishman, taken prisoner in Ava and put in prison, and there he found certain Europeans and Americans. After a time, for fear of attempts at escape, these prisoners were chained together two and two. He tells you, this Englishman, how terrible this was, and of the hate and repulsion that arose in your heart to your co-bondsman. Before they were chained together they lived in close neighbourhood, in peace and amity; but when the chains came it was far otherwise, though they were no nearer than before. They got to hate each other. And this is the Burmese idea of marriage, that it is a partnership of love and affection, and that when these die, all should be over. An unbreakable marriage appears to them as a fetter, a bond, something hateful and hate inspiring. They are a people who love to be free: they hate bonds and dogmas of every description. It is always religion that has made a bond of marriage, and here religion has not interfered. Theirs is a religion of free men and free women. CHAPTER XVIII DRINK 'The ignorant commit sins in consequence of drunkenness, and also make others drunk.'--_Acceptance into the Monkhood._