The age-herald., 1902-01-20
BEAUTIFUL MRS. LANE
 TO BE A BUDDHIST ?

Washinston.-Mrs. Lucille Blackburn Lane is about to visit India. with the in- tention of studying the religion of Budd- ha. and will probably accept his doc trines. The heroine of many social romance, the rich, young and beautiful American widow. is to seek in the fast nesses of the mountains of India, in the mysteries of the temples of the ancient worshippers, for the truth as contained in the teachings of the great ascetic monk.
 Such is the recent announcement made by Mrs. Lane, whose engagement to the famous sculptor Trentenova, has been the talk of two continents. She was un- doubtedly reared as other young girls in the Protestant church, which had been the creed of numberless forefathers, but Mrs. Lane Is not an ordinary woman, and does not do things in an ordinary way Her latest move is in keeping wits her very interesting personality Her present plan is to go abroad within few weeks-just as soon as she can wind up her affairs in the Orphans Court in this city-and, after short tour on the Con- tinent to repair to India, where the temples of the Buddhists will be visited and the tenets of Eastern philosophy studied till thoroughly mastered.
 Will Study In India.
 India, with its mighty Himalayas, its yales redolent with the odors of romance, its temples hiding in secIusion amid the shadows of eternal hills is a land to awaken the imagination of the most pro- Baic. No country can offer more de- lightful spot than the valley about the far-famed temple of Alora or the Vale of Cashmere. Yet it is not to dream away hours in the delights of the beauty that India offers, but to learn on its native soil of the philosophy that Gautama taught five centuries before the Chris tian religion was given to the world.
 Buddhism can claim a larger following than any other religion in tho world probably, yet 1t seems strange to hear of an American woman leaving the friends of her happy and luxurious life to find her faith in far-off India, among the followers of a philosopher who lived hundreds of years before Christ was born, whose deciples today claim many wonderful powers and who are certainly acquainted with many strange facts in regard 10 the power or the human mind unknown to the scientists of the West.
 Mrs Lane has no intention of devoting her life to preaching the creed to others, pr like Mime. Blavatsky, of founding an- other society. It is for her own mental and psychic development she takes this step, and hopes to find in that strange land, and still stranger religion, the balm of Gilead which every restless human heart ever seeks
 What Buddhism Is.
 Buddhism Is the religion of the greater number of the inhabitants of India, Cey- lon and Siam, and of late years a few of Its teachers have visited America and awakened interest in a creed regarding which there are many popular misconcep- tions The founder of the religion, who Is known to history as Siddhartha Gau- tama, has been invested by legends with miraculous powers, but history seems to prove that he was the son of a raja of the tribe of Sakyas, that lived five cen- turies before Christ on the banks of the river Kohana, just at the foot of the Himalaya Mountains.
 Born with every attribute of power and wealth in his hands, the young Gautama lived for many years the life of a man