Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-10-08
BELLS, FLAGS AND BEeeARs.
Characteristic Features of the BurmesS
 TempIes-Ghastly Hur1anity.

Characteristic Features of the Burmese
 Temples-Ghastly Humanity.
 But however different may be the individ- ual details of the great Burmese temples, there are three characteristic features which are never wanting to any of them, viz. bells, flags and beggars. The flags in particular are quite speciality, for as the commonest form of offering in Burmah is piece of sill yer paper or a strip of colored cloth, every shrine is a perfect rag fair of futtering shreds of red, green, blue and white, fastened to long slender saplings or to the raiIings of the shrine itself AS a matter of course, these impromptu pennons become dirtier and dirtier as time goes on, till at length the neu- tral tint fairly masters the original color. The bells-which are usually about half the height of an ordinary man, and bear an inscription setting forth their weight, the date of their casting, and the name of the person who presented them to the temple are suspended a few feet above the ground, between two upright posts, along the sides of the paved platform already described. Be side each lies stout club or the horn of an elk, which, when struck with force upon the edge or side of the bell, draws forth volume of sound that fully explains the name of "Maha Gunga (great sweet voice). given to their largest bell by the people of 8urmah. This sort of bell ringing is the invariable pre- Jude to the recital of a prayer by any devout Burman, and serves-according to Burmese ideas at least-as a kind of telephone signal to apprise the Mats (guardian spirits) whom he addresses that he is going to begin, and wishes them to pay attention to his words. Unlike the majority of devotees, who resent fercely the intervention of any unbeliever in their worship, these orthodox Buddhists are, as rule, rather pleased than otherwise hould passing European happen to strike q bell while they are at their prayer argu- ing, with some show of reason, that the , greater the noise produced, the more likely are the spirits to be on the lookout.
 As for the beggars, any one who has walked round the Mosque of Omar at Jeru- salem or the Shir-Dar at Samarcand, may multiply his worst experiences by fifty, and fall short even then of the horrible phan- tasmagoria of human squalor and human misery that rises ghostli5e amid all the bar barrie magnificence of great Burmese pagoda The pool of Bethesda itself never mustered amid it's ghastly host of ''maimed, halt and blind" such IOathsOme detormitieS as those which startle the eye here at every turn Dwartish, shapeless figures, bent and twisted out of all semblance of humanity; swollen, eyeless visages, black and foul with frghtful sores, upon which the venomous tropical flies settle down in clouds; lepcrs in the last and worst stage of their awful dis ease, white, spectral, hideous, whining with lpless mouths for charity, and stretching cut f1nGcrless hands to receive it. Had Michael Angelo ever been i'll Rangoon or ! Prone or Mandalay, he might have saved hims4 If the trouble of seeking the inspiration of the plague hospitals for tho multiplied horrors of his dreadful masterpiece.-David Ker in New York Times