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One of you hold a bayonet-point against his ribs. The rest, face each way on guard. Now all together, forward to the guardroom march!" The fakir howled. Ululating howls replied from the surrounding night, and once a red light showed for a second and disappeared in front of them. Then the fakir howled again. "Look, sahib! See! The guardroom!"
"Let go of me," muttered the fakir. "Where's the card?" asked John. "It's in my pocket, but I can't get it while you hold my hands," the pretended astrologer said. The Indian youth released his grip, but kept close watch of the professor. The latter lifted up the gaudy robe and disclosed underneath ordinary street clothing. He reached into an inner pocket and brought out the card.
"We were able to observe a group of the aborigines at their devotions. Conspicuous was a not ungraceful young female, whose head, ornamented with a plume of feathers, towered above the enclosure in which she was secluded, while an aged fakir, hakem or medicine man pronounced from a loftier structure resembling a sentry box."
"I will now talk with him, and he himself will talk with you, and thus we will come to an arrangement!" There was a commotion in the shadows, and somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty men appeared, keeping at a safe distance still, but evidently anxious to get nearer. "Now talk to the fakir, and not so loudly! Ask him 'Are you a sacred person? Ask him softly, now!"
And repeated they are in all religions, with, at most, those modifications induced by changed times and circumstances. This is why fasting and other forms of 'fleshly mortification' play so large a part in the history of religion. The savage medicine man, the Hindu fakir, the medieval saint, all create their ecstasies by the simple plan of disturbing the normal operations of the nervous system.
White drew back with a grimace, but her son, taking it, examined it curiously. "And what is there special about it?" inquired Mr. White as he took it from his son, and having examined it, placed it upon the table. "It had a spell put on it by an old fakir," said the sergeant-major, "a very holy man.
Now will I relate an actual experience which aptly illustrates that, in our dealings with those around us, we never really penetrate their minds. Man knows himself; he knows no one else friend or intimate, the child of his heart or the very wife of his bosom." "It is more easy to discover a white crow," muttered the fakir, "than know what a woman has in her heart."
Gautama was a prince of the Sakya tribe, and of the Rajput caste. He was born 620 B. C. and lived in great wealth and luxury. Driving in his pleasure grounds one day he met a man crippled with age; then a second man smitten with an incurable disease; then a corpse, and finally a fakir or ascetic, walking in a calm, dignified, serene manner.
Darwin never professed to solve the final mystery of life or death, but Haeckel and Metchnikoff do. They are so militant against religion that they become intolerant of their colleagues who presume to differ with them on matters that are purely speculative. Any one attempting to discuss new phases of human thought is a fakir.
Even then its significance was disregarded and its importance underrated. That a Mad Fakir had arrived was known. His power was still a secret. It did not long remain so. It is, thank heaven, difficult if not impossible for the modern European to fully appreciate the force which fanaticism exercises among an ignorant, warlike and Oriental population.
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