Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/252

sweeping faith in his choice of words. "The Omniscient Gautama! The All-Seeing Tathagata! The Jewel in the Lotus! The most perfectly awakened Blessed One who meditates in heaven on His seven-stepped throne!"

And again the grave assembly of Chinese had sat very still, sucking in their breath, staring at their neat, slippered feet from underneath heavy, hooded eyelids, intent, by the token of their austere racial simplicity, on effacing their personalities from the focus of alien conflict; and then, like many a priest of many a creed before him, Yu Ch'ang, sensing the silent indifference of his countrymen and interpreting it as a reproach to his hierarchical caste, had let his rage get the better of his professional, sacerdotal hypocrisy.

"The Buddha? Here? In Pell Street?" he had exclaimed. He had laughed hoarsely, meanly. "Find Him, the Excellent One, the Perfect One, in Pell Street? Look for the shining glory of His face—here—in the soot and grease and slippery slime of Pell Street? Search, belike, for fish on top of the mountain, and for horns on the head of the cat! Bah!" He had spat out the word, had risen, crossed over to the window, thrown it wide, and pointed to the west, where a great, slow wind was stalking through the sky, picking up fluttering rags of cloud. "Go! Find Him, the Buddha, in the stinking, rotten heaven of Pell Street! Go, go—by all means! And, perhaps, when you have found Him, you will also have found your tao, fool!"

"I shall try," had come Li Ping-Yeng's reply. "Yes; most decidedly shall I try." He had walked to the door. There he had turned. "Little brother," he had said to the priest over his shoulder, without malice