It is hardly too much to say that Burma is still an unexplored country. The best of us stand here only upon the very brink of a new and wonderful world. We know just enough about Burma,, its philosophy, history, archæology, flora, fauna, and language, to realize the true extent of our ignorance. Behind a quaint expression, or beneath a single word, there may be - and often is - the accumulated experience of centuries. The ideas which a people hold to-day are the inheritance of all their past generations. We ourselves have been brought up to hold views widely differing from those of the Burmese. So we may not easily comprehend the true inwardness that springs from Burmese and Buddhist philosophy. That is why we still stand only upon the brink of a new world - and, let it be noted, the most trivial daily incidents often spring from the deepest sources of the past. Perhaps the reader himself has already fallen under the spell of a Burmese enchantment. If so, he will understand me all the better. The Burmese are a friendly, lovable people, rich in the milk of human kindness, and endowed with rare grace and good taste, both in inward and in outward things.