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A guardian walked noiselessly on hes naked feet, an old man was lighting a row of candles.... Here and there a yellow-robed monk muttered a husky invocation; his droning punctuated the silence.
Somerset Maugham,The Gentleman in the Parlour, Signet Classic Books, London, 1967, p.12.
PLACE: Rangoon, Burma (in the Shwe Dagon Pagoda)
TIME: early 1920's
In front of one a mendicant in his yellow robe chants in a high-picthed voice some litany that you do not understand... Hawks wheel about their summits and little green parrots chatter in the eaves.
Somerset Maugham,The Gentleman in the Parlour, Signet Classic Books, London, 1967, p. 16
PLACE: A Pagoda in the town of Pagan, Burma.
TIME: early 1920's
The birds were singing noisily in the trees; the crickets chirped and the frogs croaked, croaked, croaked. Somewhere a boy was whistling a melancholy tune on a rude pipe and in the compound the natives were chattering loudly. There is no silences in the East.
Somerset Maugham,The Gentleman in the Parlour, Signet Classic Books, London, 1967, p.17.
PLACE: Burma
TIME: early 1920's
Then I went to see the great bell at Mengon... They struck the great bell so that I might hear its tone; boom, boom, it went, a long, low note that travelled in slow reverberations down the river, a solemn sound that seemed to call the soul from its tenement of clay... and the nuns, following the sound, burst into ribald cackles of laughter, hi, hi, hi, that mocked the call of the great bell.
Somerset Maugham,The Gentleman in the Parlour, Signet Classic Books, London, 1967, p. 27.
PLACE: Mengon, Burma
TIME: early 1920's
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