Physical condition bridges have right away modernized in to application physical condition suspended-deck bridges which concede a use of amiable as well as tensile reserve of their growth. We might find the aloft grip complement functions for you. I consider it was wish feat as well as amicable movement .
We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away. When I worked in a second-hand bookshop�so easily pictured, if you don't work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios�the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people. Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one.
First edition snobs were much commoner than lovers of literature, but oriental students haggling over cheap textbooks were commoner still, and vague-minded women looking for birthday presents for their nephews were commonest of all.
Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the dear old lady who 'wants a book for an invalid' a very common demand, that , and the other dear old lady who read such a nice book in and wonders whether you can find her a copy.
Unfortunately she doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover. But apart from these there are two well-known types of pest by whom every second-hand bookshop is haunted. One is the decayed person smelling of old bread-crusts who comes every day, sometimes several times a day, and tries to sell you worthless books. The other is the person who orders large quantities of books for which he has not the smallest intention of paying.
In our shop we sold nothing on credit, but we would put books aside, or order them if necessary, for people who arranged to fetch them away later. Scarcely half the people who ordered books from us ever came back. It used to puzzle me at first. What made them do it? They would come in and demand some rare and expensive book, would make us promise over and over again to keep it for them, and then would vanish never to return.
But many of them, of course, were unmistakable paranoiacs. They used to talk in a grandiose manner about themselves and tell the most ingenious stories to explain how they had happened to come out of doors without any money�stories which, in many cases, I am sure they themselves believed. In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.
In the end one gets to know these people almost at a glance. For all their big talk there is something moth-eaten and aimless about them.
Very often, when we were dealing with an obvious paranoiac, we would put aside the books he asked for and then put them back on the shelves the moment he had gone. None of them, I noticed, ever attempted to take books away without paying for them; merely to order them was enough�it gave them, I suppose, the illusion that they were spending real money. Like most second-hand bookshops we had various sidelines.
We sold second-hand typewriters, for instance, and also stamps�used stamps, I mean. Stamp-collectors are a strange, silent, fish-like breed, of all ages, but only of the male sex; women, apparently, fail to see the peculiar charm of gumming bits of coloured paper into albums.
We also sold sixpenny horoscopes compiled by somebody who claimed to have foretold the Japanese earthquake. They were in sealed envelopes and I never opened one of them myself, but the people who bought them often came back and told us how 'true' their horoscopes had been. Doubtless any horoscope seems 'true' if it tells you that you are highly attractive to the opposite sex and your worst fault is generosity. We did a good deal of business in children's books, chiefly 'remainders'.
Modern books for children are rather horrible things, especially when you see them in the mass. Personally I would sooner give a child a copy of Petronius Arbiter than Peter Pan , but even Barrie seems manly and wholesome compared with some of his later imitators. At Christmas time we spent a feverish ten days struggling with Christmas cards and calendars, which are tiresome things to sell but good business while the season lasts.
It used to interest me to see the brutal cynicism with which Christian sentiment is exploited. The touts from the Christmas card firms used to come round with their catalogues as early as June. A phrase from one of their invoices sticks in my memory.
It was: '2 doz. Infant Jesus with rabbits'. But our principal sideline was a lending library�the usual 'twopenny no-deposit' library of five or six hundred volumes, all fiction.
How the book thieves must love those libraries! It is the easiest crime in the world to borrow a book at one shop for twopence, remove the label and sell it at another shop for a shilling. Nevertheless booksellers generally find that it pays them better to have a certain number of books stolen we used to lose about a dozen a month than to frighten customers away by demanding a deposit.
Our shop stood exactly on the frontier between Hampstead and Camden Town, and we were frequented by all types from baronets to bus-conductors. Probably our library subscribers were a fair cross-section of London's reading public.
It is therefore worth noting that of all the authors in our library the one who 'went out' the best was�Priestley? No, Ethel M. Dell's novels, of course, are read solely by women, but by women of all kinds and ages and not, as one might expect, merely by wistful spinsters and the fat wives of tobacconists.
It is not true that men don't read novels, but it is true that there are whole branches of fiction that they avoid. Roughly speaking, what one might call the average novel�the ordinary, good-bad, Galsworthy-and-water stuff which is the norm of the English novel�seems to exist only for women. Men read either the novels it is possible to respect, or detective stories. But their consumption of detective stories is terrific. One of our subscribers to my knowledge read four or five detective stories every week for over a year, besides others which he got from another library.
What chiefly surprised me was that he never read the same book twice. Apparently the whole of that frightful torrent of trash the pages read every year would, I calculated, cover nearly three quarters of an acre was stored for ever in his memory. He took no notice of titles or author's names, but he could tell by merely glancing into a book whether be had 'had it already'.
In a lending library you see people's real tastes, not their pretended ones, and one thing that strikes you is how completely the 'classical' English novelists have dropped out of favour. At the mere sight of a nineteenth-century novel people say, 'Oh, but that's old!
Yet it is always fairly easy to sell Dickens, just as it is always easy to sell Shakespeare. Dickens is one of those authors whom people are 'always meaning to' read, and, like the Bible, he is widely known at second hand. People know by hearsay that Bill Sikes was a burglar and that Mr Micawber had a bald head, just as they know by hearsay that Moses was found in a basket of bulrushes and saw the 'back parts' of the Lord. Another thing that is very noticeable is the growing unpopularity of American books.
And another�the publishers get into a stew about this every two or three years�is the unpopularity of short stories.
The kind of person who asks the librarian to choose a book for him nearly always starts by saying 'I don't want short stories', or 'I do not desire little stories', as a German customer of ours used to put it.
If you ask them why, they sometimes explain that it is too much fag to get used to a new set of characters with every story; they like to 'get into' a novel which demands no further thought after the first chapter. I believe, though, that the writers are more to blame here than the readers. Most modern short stories, English and American, are utterly lifeless and worthless, far more so than most novels.
The short stories which are stories are popular enough, vide D. Lawrence, whose short stories are as popular as his novels.
On the whole�in spite of my employer's kindness to me, and some happy days I spent in the shop�no. Given a good pitch and the right amount of capital, any educated person ought to be able to make a small secure living out of a bookshop. Unless one goes in for 'rare' books it is not a difficult trade to learn, and you start at a great advantage if you know anything about the insides of books.
Most booksellers don't. You can get their measure by having a look at the trade papers where they advertise their wants. If you don't see an ad. Also it is a humane trade which is not capable of being vulgarized beyond a certain point.
The combines can never squeeze the small independent bookseller out of existence as they have squeezed the grocer and the milkman. But the hours of work are very long�I was only a part-time employee, but my employer put in a seventy-hour week, apart from constant expeditions out of hours to buy books�and it is an unhealthy life.
As a rule a bookshop is horribly cold in winter, because if it is too warm the windows get misted over, and a bookseller lives on his windows. And books give off more and nastier dust than any other class of objects yet invented, and the top of a book is the place where every bluebottle prefers to die.
But the real reason why I should not like to be in the book trade for life is that while I was in it I lost my love of books. A bookseller has to tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them; still worse is the fact that he is constantly dusting them and hauling them to and fro.
There was a time when I really did love books�loved the sight and smell and feel of them, I mean, at least if they were fifty or more years old. Nothing Boat And Stream Formula Bankersadda 89 pleased me quite so much as to buy a job lot of them for a shilling at a country auction. There is a peculiar flavour about the battered unexpected books you pick up in that kind of collection: minor eighteenth-century poets, out-of-date gazeteers, odd volumes of forgotten novels, bound numbers of ladies' magazines of the sixties.
For casual reading�in your bath, for instance, or late at night when you are too tired to go to bed, or in the odd quarter of an hour before lunch�there is nothing to touch a back number of the Girl's Own Paper.
But as soon as I went to work in the bookshop I stopped buying books. Seen in the mass, five or ten thousand at a time, books were boring and even slightly sickening.
Nowadays I do buy one occasionally, but only if it is a book that I want to read and can't borrow, and I never buy junk. The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles. In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people�the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.
I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so.
When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee another Burman looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.
All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically�and secretly, of course�I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear.
In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos�all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective.
I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible.
With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum , upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty. One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening.
It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism�the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out.
I took my rifle, an old. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant's doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone "must. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours' journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town.
The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody's bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it. The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palm-leaf, winding all over a steep hillside.
I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains. We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information.
That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant.
I had almost made up my mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance away.
There was a loud, scandalized cry of "Go away, child! Go away this instant! Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the children ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man's dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes.
The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long.
He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.
The friction of the great beast's foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend's house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle.
I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant. The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant.
They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot.
It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant�I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary�and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels.
At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards us.
He took not the slightest notice of the crowd's approach. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth. I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him.
It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant�it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery�and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of "must" was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him.
Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home. But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side.
I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching.
And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me Boat And Stream Formula In Bengali Example forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East.
Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd�seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind.
I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him.
He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing�no, that was impossible.
The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at. But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to.
Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal. Besides, there was the beast's owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly.
I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.
It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller.
But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn't be frightened in front of "natives"; and so, in general, he isn't frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill.
And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do. There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats.
They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.
When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick�one never does when a shot goes home�but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered.
He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time�it might have been five seconds, I dare say�he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old.
I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree.
He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay. I got up. The Burmans were already racing past me across the mud.
It was obvious that the elephant would never rise again, but he was not dead. He was breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps, his great mound of a side painfully rising and falling. His mouth was wide open�I could see far down into caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing did not weaken.
Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die. His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further.
I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him.
I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock.
In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away. I heard later that it took him half an hour to die. Burmans were bringing dahs and baskets even before I left, and I was told they had stripped his body almost to the bones by the afternoon.
Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to control it. Among the Europeans opinion was divided.
The older men said I was right, the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie.
And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.
Our civilization, pace Chesterton, is founded on coal, more completely than one realizes until one stops to think about it. The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make machines, are all directly or indirectly dependent upon coal. In the metabolism of the Western world the coal-miner is second in importance only to the man who ploughs the soil. He is a sort of caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything that is not grimy is supported. For this reason the actual process by which coal is extracted is well worth watching, if you get the chance and are willing to take the trouble.
When you go down a coal-mine it is important to try and get to the coal face when the 'fillers' are at work. This is not easy, because when the mine is working visitors are a nuisance and are not encouraged, but if you go at any other time, it is possible to come away with a totally wrong impression. On a Sunday, for instance, a mine seems almost peaceful. The time to go there is when the machines are roaring and the air is black with coal dust, and when you can actually see what the miners have to do.
At those times the place is like hell, or at any rate like my own mental picture of hell. Most of the things one imagines in hell are if there�heat, noise, confusion, darkness, foul air, and, above all, unbearably cramped space.
Everything except the fire, for there is no fire down there except the feeble beams of Davy lamps and electric torches which scarcely penetrate the clouds of coal dust. When you have finally got there�and getting there is a in itself: I will explain that in a moment�you crawl through the last line of pit props and see opposite you a shiny black wall three or four feet high.
This is the coal face. Overhead is the smooth ceiling made by the rock from which the coal has been cut; underneath is the rock again, so that the gallery you are in is only as high as the ledge of coal itself, probably not much more than a yard. The first impression of all, overmastering everything else for a while, is the frightful, deafening din from the conveyor belt which carries the coal away. You cannot see very far, because the fog of coal dust throws back the beam of your lamp, but you can see on either side of you the line of half-naked kneeling men, one to every four or five yards, driving their shovels under the fallen coal and flinging it swiftly over their left shoulders.
They are feeding it on to the conveyor belt, a moving rubber, belt a couple of feet wide which runs a yard or two behind them. Down this belt a glittering river of coal races constantly. In a big mine it is carrying away several tons of coal every minute.
It bears it off to some place in the main roads where it is shot into tubs holding half a tun, and thence dragged to the cages and hoisted to the outer air. It is impossible to watch the 'fillers' at work without feeling a pang of envy for their toughness. It is a dreadful job that they do, an almost superhuman job by the standard of an ordinary person. For they are not only shifting monstrous quantities of coal, they are also doing, it in a position that doubles or trebles the work.
They have got to remain kneeling all the while�they could hardly rise from their knees without hitting the ceiling�and you can easily see by trying it what a tremendous effort this means. Shovelling is comparatively easy when you are standing up, because you can use your knee and thigh to drive the shovel along; kneeling down, the whole of the strain is thrown upon your arm and belly muscles.
And the other conditions do not exactly make things easier. There is the heat�it varies, but in some mines it is suffocating�and the coal dust that stuffs up your throat and nostrils and collects along your eyelids, and the unending rattle of the conveyor belt, which in that confined space is rather like the rattle of a machine gun. But the fillers look and work as though they were made of iron.
They really do look like iron hammered iron statues�under the smooth coat of coal dust which clings to them from head to foot. It is only when you see miners down the mine and naked that you realize what splendid men, they are.
Most of them are small big men are at a disadvantage in that job but nearly all of them have the most noble bodies; wide shoulders tapering to slender supple waists, and small pronounced buttocks and sinewy thighs, with not an ounce of waste flesh anywhere.
In the hotter mines they wear only a pair of thin drawers, clogs and knee-pads; in the hottest mines of all, only the clogs and knee-pads. You can hardly tell by the look of them whether they are young or old.
They may be any age up to sixty or even sixty-five, but when they are black and naked they all look alike. No one could do their work who had not a young man's body, and a figure fit for a guardsman at that, just a few pounds of extra flesh on the waist-line, and the constant bending would be impossible. You can never forget that spectacle once you have seen it�the line of bowed, kneeling figures, sooty black all over, driving their, huge shovels under the coal with stupendous force and speed.
They are on the job for seven and a half hours, theoretically without a break, for there is no time 'off'. Actually they, snatch a quarter of an hour or so at some time during the shift to eat the food they have brought with them, usually a hunk of bread and dripping and a bottle of cold tea.
The first time I was watching the 'fillers' at work I put my hand upon some dreadful slimy thing among the coal dust. I am pretty sure that you will be at the top of the web design market if you add more features without losing intuitiveness! What makes tools like this the best is many lots of features but also the ease of use. We needed to quickly and fast get an appealing website. This tool is a flying unicorn, the holy grail� the loch ness monster� rare and awesome, and something nobody has ever actually seen.
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Always maintain the ideal, then the final goal can be realised soon. There is no doubt about this. Brahmacharya is absolutely necessary for the attainment of peace and God- vision.
It is a fresh spring flower whose each petal gives off fragrance of freedom. It is a powerful weapon for waging war against the internal demons of lust, anger, greed and jealousy. God is Rasa. Rasa is Veerya, the vital fluid or semen. You can attain eternal bliss and peace by preserving the Veerya. Brahmacharya means control of the Veerya. The vital force or Veerya is preserved only by one who is established in the practice of Brahmacharya. The vital fluid or semen is lost and wasted during s xual indulgence.
From food comes juice or chyle; from chyle comes blood and flesh; from flesh comes fat; from fat comes bones; from bones come marrow. Lastly, from marrow comes semen. The Veerya comes out of the very marrow concealed in the bones.
It is found in a subtle state in all the cells of the body. Mark here how precious the semen is! It is the last essence of food. It is the essence of essences. As the vital force is the most precious substance in the physical body, it should be carefully preserved. Its wastage means loss of physical and mental energy. It is said that a drop of semen comes out of forty drops of blood. According to Ayurveda it comes from eighty drops of blood.
Just a sugar pervades the entire sugarcane and butter pervades milk, so also semen pervades the whole body. Just as buttermilk is thinned after the butter has been extracted, so also the semen is thinned by its wastage.
The more the wastage of the semen, the more the physical and mental weakness. When semen is preserved, it gets reabsorbed by the body and stored in the brain as Ojas Shakti or spiritual power. The seminal energy is changed into spiritual energy. This is called the process of s x-sublimation. The Ojas Shakti is used for spiritual Sadhana by the Yogi. The vital force is closely linked with the nervous system.
Hence, it is vitally necessary to preserve it carefully if one desires to have strong nerves. It is the hidden treasure in him. It gives a glow to the face, strength to the intellect and well being to the entire system. Girls, too, suffer great loss through having unchaste thoughts and giving way to lust.
Vital nervous energy is lost. There is a corresponding loss of Veerya in them as well. This can be achieved only if a person is established in perfect Brahmacharya. It is through the attainment of good conduct only that one can live to a ripe old age and be ever happy and peaceful. Even if all other qualities may be lacking, good conduct alone will ensure longevity. You must have pure character, otherwise you will lose your vital energy or Veerya.
An early death will be the result. Another important point to remember is that the secret of long life lies in the choice of pure food and drink, chastity, temperance, sobriety and a cheerful and optimistic outlook on life. So, gluttons, drunkards and those given to idleness and laziness, cannot hope to have long life.
According to psychological and natural laws, the length of human life, or any life, should be at least five times the period necessary to reach full growth. The horse grows for a period of about three years and lives to be about twelve or fourteen. The camel grows for eight years and lives to be forty. Man grows for about twenty to twenty-five years. If all accidents are counted out, his normal duration of life should be not less than one hundred years. This tallies very well with the advice of the Hindu Holy Scriptures that Brahmacharya should be practised for the first twenty-five years.
During the period of growth there is not to be any loss of the vital fluid. There are some rare cases where people have attained longevity and high intellectual powers despite their loose, immoral ways. This is obviously due to their past Karma. But they would have been still more powerful and brilliant through the practice of Brahmacharya.
Firstly, there is the student Brahmachari, who marries and becomes a householder after completing his study. He is in the first of the four stages of life described in Hindu law books.
The second type of Brahmachari is the lifelong celibate and is called an Akhanda unbroken Brahmachari. Brahmacharis of this latter type are very rare. Matted hair, application of ash and wearing a loincloth cannot make one a true Brahmachari. The Akhanda Brahmachari is one who has not allowed a single drop of semen to be wasted for an unbroken period of twelve years. Such a person can have the vision of God without effort.
He achieves the goal of life. He glows with effulgence. The seminal energy of an Akhanda Brahmachari has been converted into Ojas Shakti or spiritual energy through the process called s x-sublimation.
Such a person can turn out a great deal of mental work. He is very intelligent. He has a magnetic aura on his face. His eyes shine brightly. Peace of mind, fearlessness, a strong will, good memory and power of concentration, keen application to work- these are the fruits of Brahmacharya. The practice of Karma Yoga or selfless service will not be possible without Brahmacharya.
If the Veerya semen is lost, the Prana gets unsteady. If the Prana gets agitated, one becomes nervous. Then the mind also cannot work properly and the person becomes fickle-minded. This is mental weakness. Brahmacharya brings material and spiritual progress. It is a powerful weapon for waging war against the demons of lust, anger, greed and jealousy.
It gives great energy, a clear brain, strong will, retentive memory and good power of enquiry. Lack of Brahmacharya brings about loss of memory, a weak will, nervous disorders, tension, lack of the power of concentration, and physical diseases.
The ignorant man is an instrument in the hands of his thoughts and Karmas. Man, the master of his destiny, has lost his divine glory and becomes a slave, a tool in the hands of s x and ego.
Knowledge of God destroys these two enemies. This is an ill-founded doubt. These complexes are due to other causes. They are morbid states due to excessive jealousy, hatred, anger, worry and depression. In fact, the opposite is true. It invigorates the mind and nerves. It helps one to save physical and mental energy. It helps to increase memory, will power and brain power. It bestows immense strength, vigour and vitality. It gives new life to the system, rebuilds the tissues and cells, energises digestion, and gives one power to face difficulties in the daily battle of life.
A perfect Brahmachari can shake the whole world, can top the waves of the ocean, like Lord Jesus. Like Jnana Dev, he can blow up mountains and command the five elements. There is nothing in the three worlds that cannot be achieved by such a person.
A well disciplined life, study of scriptures, Satsang, Japa, meditation, Pranayama, Sattwic and moderate diet, daily self-analysis and introspection, practice of right conduct- all these will pave the way towards the attainment of perfection in Brahmacharya. Most people lead a life without any kind of discipline and religious ideals, with the result that they are always filled with fears, cares, worries and anxieties.
Through diverse desires, they get entangled and create numerous problems for themselves. In the case of young children, pure non-stimulating food, games and daily exercises are very important for keeping up Brahmacharya. Thus he is named as Rishyasringa, i. Not knowing others that Brahman the best, will always be abiding his father, lest his renowned celibacy always praised by the Brahmans, will be hindered.
The word dvaividhyam also means two kinds of celibacy, vratitva and prajaapatyam. One, as a bachelor and the other after marriage, voluntarily distancing away from his wife on certain forbidden days like full moon and new moon days, during daytime, eclipses, and other astronomical occurrences and some more. This kind of self-imposed celibacy is one way of observing sustained family planning methods, instead of resorting to medicaments.
Sage Rishyasringa looses no time with his servitor-ship to the Sacrificial Fire and also to his celebrated father, and during this period alone there will be a famed and very strong king Romapaada, a valiant in Anga country� But by a violation of righteousness of that king there will be a shocking and devastating famine in that country� While the famine is besetting that king Roamapada will be afflicted with grim, and on summoning Brahmans and learned scholars he will address them�.
On listening them the king becomes thoughtful about the idea by which it is possible to bring that self-controlled sage to his place�Then that intellectual king decides along with ministers, to dispatch clergymen and ministers, honouring them well, and then sends them. It is only within recent years, practically the last forty, that the scientific attention has been brought to bear upon the subject of the nature and evolution of the s xual impulse in man.
Psychologists and clinical students have made careful investigations into the phenomena of normal and abnormal s xual life among the civilised populations of the present day. The close connection of the subject of s x with religion, both in social evolution and individual psychology, renders the study of chastity an extremely important chapter in the past and future sociology of the race.
The gratification of every worldly desire is sinful. Man was created for a life of spiritual communion with God. Moral goodness consists in renouncing all sensuous pleasures, in separating from the world, in living solely after the spirit, in imitating the perfection and purity of God. Sensuality is inconsistent with wisdom and holiness. The great business of life is to avoid impurity.
Man has degraded himself to a great degree by becoming a puppet of passion. He has become an imitative machine. He has lost his power of discrimination. He has sunk into the most abject form of slavery. What a sad state! What a lamentable plight indeed! If he wishes to regain his lost divine state and Brahmic glory, his whole being must be completely transmuted by entertaining sublime divine thoughts and practice of regular meditation.
Transmutation of s x-desire is a very potent, efficacious and satisfactory way to realise eternal Bliss. Brahmacharya is the vow of celibacy in thought, word and deed, by which one attains Self-realisation or reaches Brahman.
It means control of not only the reproductive Indriya but also control of all senses in thought, word and deed. The door to Nirvana or perfection is complete Brahmacharya. Complete celibacy is the master-key to open the realms of elysian Bliss. The avenue to the abode of Supreme Peace begins from Brahmacharya or purity. One drop of semen is manufactured out of 40 drops of blood according to the medical science.
According to Ayurveda it is elaborated out of 80 drops of blood. Just as sugar is all-pervading in the sugar-cane, butter in milk, so also semen is pervading the whole body. Just as the butter-milk is thin after butter is removed, so also semen is thinned by its wastage.
The more the wastage of semen the more is the weakness. It is the hidden treasure for man. It imparts Boats And Streams Aptitude Formulas Worksheet Brahma-Tejas to the face and strength to the intellect. If the spermatic secretion in men is continuous, it must either be expelled or reabsorbed.
As a result of the most patient and persevering scientific investigations, whenever the seminal secretions are conserved and thereby reabsorbed into the system, it goes towards enriching the blood and strengthening the brain. Dio Louis taught that the conservation of this element is essential to the strength of body, vigour of mind and keenness of intellect. Another writer Dr. It is almost universally conceded that the choicest element of the blood enters into the composition of the spermatic secretion.
Abstinence or continence is the corner-stone or foundation on which the pedestal of Moksha stands. If the foundation is not very strong, the superstructure will fall down when there is heavy rain. Even so if you are not established in Brahmacharya, if your mind is agitated by evil thoughts, you will fall down. You cannot reach the summit of the ladder of Yoga or the highest Nirvikalpa Samadhi.
It is with this weapon of Brahmacharya that he acquired unsurpassable strength and velour. The great Bhishma, the grandfather of Pandavas and Kauravas conquered death by Brahmacharya It is only Lakshmana, the ideal Brahmachari who put down the man of inestimable prowess, the conqueror of three worlds, Meghanada, son of Ravana.
Even Lord Rama could not face him. It is through the force of Brahmacharya that Lakshmana was able to defeat the invincible Meghanada. The valour and greatness of emperor Prithviraj was due to the strength of Brahmacharya. There is nothing in the three worlds that cannot be attained by a Brahmachari. The Rishis of yore knew fully well of the value of Brahmacharya and that is the reason why they have sung in beautiful verses about the glory of Brahmacharya.
Just as the oil come in a wick burns with glowing light so also the Veerya or semen flows up by the practice of Yoga Sadhana and is converted into Tejas or Ojas.
The Brahmachari shines with Brahmic Aura in his face. Brahmacharya is the bright light that shines in the house of human body. It is the fully-blossomed flower of life around which the bees of strength, patience, knowledge and purity and Dhriti wander about humming hither and thither. In other words he who observes Brahmacharya will be endowed with the above qualities. Brahmacharya is the basis for the attainment of Kaya Siddhi. Complete celibacy must be observed.
This is of paramount importance. By the practice of Yoga the semen becomes transmuted into Ojas-Sakti. The Yogi will have a perfect body. There will be charm and grace in his movements. He can live as long as he likes Iccha Mrityu. Women who are chaste can be called as Brahmacharinis.
Through the force of Brahmacharya only, many women of yore have done miraculous deeds and shown to the world the power of chastity. It is through the power of chastity only, she was able to turn the Great Deities as babies. Savitri has brought back the life of Satyavan, her husband, from the noose of Yama by her chastity. Such is the glory of womanhood. Such is the power of chastity or Brahmacharya. Real culture is establishment of perfect physical and mental Brahmacharya. Real culture is the realisation of identity of the individual soul with the Supreme Soul through direct experience.
The term singing, dancing, talks of ladies are very pleasing. The attraction for objects will gradually vanish if one begins to think seriously of the unreal nature of the world. If one clearly understands the serious damages that come through an impure life and if he determines to attain the goal of life by leading a pure life, he must keep his mind busily engaged in Divine thoughts, concentration, meditation, study and service of humanity. A gentleman who had given up smoking, drinking, though married, wants to practice Brahmacharya.
His wife has no objection, but he Boat And Stream Formula In Bengali Web himself finds hard this discipline, especially the trouble seems to be in the control of sight. This means that the eyes are attracted to well-dressed ladies. But when I left the practice I was not able to control my sight and I was attracted by well-dressed ladies in the streets and half-nude pictures that are pasted in front of picture houses.
The sea beach and Mall Road are my enemies. Every day I wept and groaned, and if I was unwillingly overcome by sleep, my lean body lay on the bare earth. I say nothing of my food and drink, for in the desert even invalids had no drink but cold water. Well, I who out of fear of hell had condemned myself to this prison, companion of scorpions and wild beasts, often seemed in imagination among a band of girls. My face was pale with fasting; my mind within my frigid body was burning with desire; the fire of lust would still flame up in a body that already seemed to be dead.
There is no hope for you to have Self-realisation or knowledge of the Self if you are not well established in Brahmacharya. Brahmacharya is the master-key to open the realms of eternal bliss. Just as a house that is built on a rotten foundation will surely fall down, so also you will fall down from your meditation if you have laid no proper foundation, viz.
You may meditate for a period of twelve years and yet you will have no success in Samadhi if you have not destroyed the subtle lust or the craving-seed that lingers in the innermost recess of your heart. You will have to search out carefully this dire enemy�lust, that lies hidden in the various corners of your heart. Just as the fox hides itself in the bush, so also this lust hides itself in the substratum and corners of the mind. You can detect its presence only if you are vigilant. Intense self-examination is very necessary.
Just as powerful enemies can be conquered only if you attack them from all sides, so also you can keep the powerful senses under control if you attack them from all sides, from within and without, from above and from beneath. You must not labour under the delusion that you have eradicated the lust completely by adjusting the diet a bit, by practicing Pranayama and by doing a little Japa, and that you have nothing more to do. Temptation or Mara may overcome you at any moment.
Eternal vigilance and rigorous Sadhana are very essential. You cannot attain perfect Brahmacharya by limited effort. Just as a machine gun is necessary to kill a powerful enemy, so also constant, rigorous, powerful Sadhana is necessary to annihilate this powerful enemy, lust.
You must not be puffed up with pride for your little achievement in celibacy. If you are put to test you will hopelessly fail. You must be ever conscious of your shortcomings and you must constantly strive to get rid of them. Highest effort is necessary. Then only you will have sanguine success in this direction.
It is easy to tame a wild tiger or a lion or an elephant. It is easy to play with the cobra. It is easy to walk over the fire. It is easy to devour fire and drink the waters of ocean.
It is easy to uproot the Himalayas. It is easy to get victory in the battlefield. But it is difficult to eradicate lust. But you need not despair even a bit. Have faith in God, in His Name and in His grace. Lust cannot be completely rooted out of the mind except by the grace of the Lord. You are bound to succeed if you have faith in Him. You can destroy lust in the twinkling of an eye. The Lord makes a dumb man to speak and a lame man to ascend a steep hill.
Mere human effort alone will not suffice. The Divine Grace is needed. God helps those who help themselves. If you do total self-surrender, Mother Herself does the Sadhana. Positive always overcomes negative. You need not be discouraged at any rate.
Plunge yourself seriously in meditation, kill Mara and come out victorious in the struggle. Shine as a brilliant Yogi. Thou art ever pure Atman. Feel this, O Visvaranjan! A Brahmachari should avoid looking at a woman with lustful eyes. He should not have a desire to touch her or go near her with evil intention. He should not play, cut jokes or talk with her. He should not talk to her secretly. He should not think of a lady. He should not have a carnal desire to have s xual enjoyment.
A Brahmachari should, without fail, avoid s xual intercourse. If he breaks any of the above rules, he violates the vow of Brahmacharya. For protecting the semen, it is essential to wear always a strip of black-coloured cloth over the private part; for there will be no night emission and growth of testicles. It is befitting for a celibate to wear always wooden sandals as thereby the semen will be conserved, eyes will be benefited, life prolonged and holiness and lustre will increase.
The vow of celibacy will give you sure protection against temptation. It is a strong weapon to attack lust. If you do not take a vow of celibacy, the mind will tempt you at any moment. You will have no strength to resist the temptation and you will become a sure victim. He who is weak and effeminate is afraid of taking the vow.
My will is strong and powerful. I can resist any sort of temptation. I am doing Upasana. I am practicing will culture. He has no control over the senses.
That man only in whom the subtle desire for the object to be renounced lurks in the corners of his mind brings in such sort of excuses. You must have right understanding, discrimination and dispassion. Then only your renunciation will be lasting and permanent. If renunciation is not the outcome of discrimination and dispassion the mind will be simply waiting for an opportunity to get back the object that has been renounced.
If you are weak, take a vow of celibacy for a month and then extend it to three months. You will gain some strength now. You will be able to prolong the period to six months. Gradually you will be able to extend the vow for one or two or three years.
Sleep separately and do rigorous Japa, Kirtan and meditation daily. You will hate lust now. You experience freedom and indescribable joy. Your partner in life also should do Japa, meditation and Kirtan daily.
You may be able to stop copulation for months and years, but there should not be any s xual craving or attraction for ladies. Evil thoughts also should not arise when you look at a lady, when you are in the company of ladies.
If you succeed in this direction, then you are established in perfect Brahmacharya. You have crossed the danger zone. There is no harm in looking at a woman, but you must have a chaste look. You must have Atma Bhava. Thou art an image or manifestation of Mother Kali. Do not tempt me. Do not allure me. I have understood now the secret of Maya and Her creation. Who has created these forms? There is an omnipotent, all-pervading and all-merciful Creator behind these names and forms.
This is all decaying false beauty. The Creator or God is Beauty of beauties.
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