264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



depend a good deal on public approbation. Simon Stylites bad visitors from all 

 parts of the Cbristian world, wbo admired and at last almost worshiped him. 

 Besides sticking to his pillar, he had a trick of doubling himself up till his fore- 

 head almost touched his narrow pedestal. At evening prayers he often treated 

 the spectators to a variety of Talmagian gymnastics, and, if they implored him 

 to come down, his only answer was a grunt of stern defiance. In a lonely desert 

 he probably would have anticipated their wishes. If there is anything meri- 

 torious iu self-torture, the Indian fakirs, too, get all the encouragement they de- 

 serve. A Hindoo, who might dismiss an ordinary beggar with a kick, would 

 share his last rice-cake with a mendicant presenting himself with a drag-chain 

 round his neck and a bull-ring in his nose. The inventor of a new torture can 

 count upon a liberal share of public patronage. Tbe English garrison of Cawn- 

 poor was once honored by the presence of a Mlschi/, or religious devotee, who 

 had stationed himself in a corner of their parade-ground, and promoted the wel- 

 fare of his soul by squatting down between two blazing fires, while the sun in- 

 flicted its caloric on his shaven head. A crowd of natives watched him with 

 respectful admiration, and, whenever one of his fires threatened to go out, they 

 fetched in a fresh supply of fuel, to further the progress of the good work. 



The exploits of a sensational iilschu become the boast of his native place. 

 Rass-el-Shork and Rass-el-Hissam, two suburbs of Delhi, had several riots about 

 the respective merits of their fakirs. The matter was finally referred to a Mo- 

 hammedan umpire, and the men of Hissam proved that their hero had passed 

 forty-eight hours in tenter-hooks, and glorified Brahma by eating a three-pound 

 bundle of wormwood, while the Shork party claimed the prize of virtue for a 

 saint who had swallowed a gallon of cajeput-oil, and turned somersaults till the 

 arithmetic of the suburb failed to express the number of thousands. He had 

 also rolled himself from Delhi to Agra, fasted a full week, and abstained from 

 drinking water while he counted the number of grains in a two-bushel measure 

 of millet-seeds. But all his labors proved in vain when the umpire learned that 

 the Hissam champion had once sat two days and a night in a nest-hill of the 

 Formica rvfa (a kind of red horse-ants). 



Our word fakir is derived from the Arabian falchar, a pauper, a mendicant. 

 The Mohammedan dervishes, however, do not entirely part with their reason, 

 though the Sufi sect believes in the sanctifying influence of celibacy and solitude. 

 The Brahmans and Buddhists are both ultra-ascetic, but with this difference : 

 that the former practice their penances as an expiation of some special sin ; the 

 others on general principles, and with a view of subduing the vitality of the 

 body, for the world-blighting dogma of the antagonism of body and soul seems 

 to have been first promulgated by Buddha Sakya-Muni, the Nepaul arch-pessi- 

 mist. 



In the columns of the " Catholic World " for August, the Rev. J. F. 



Callahan, D. D., discusses the " Cincinnati Pastoral " and its critics: "Liberty," 

 says the Rev. J. F. C, D. D., "never did exist except under the shadow of the 

 cross. Equality has no home except at the altar on which the shadow of that 

 cross falls. Take the Catholic Church out of the world, and liberty would sink 

 into an eternal grave. If Protestant nations are free, it is because they once 

 were Catholics. If a republic was built in this New World, Catholic principles 

 were the architect." 



The absolute truth of the above rivals the candor of Dr. Christlieb's " Short 

 Method with Infidels." Evidently the " persecuted classes," as the "Bavarian 

 Brewers' Union " calls the Romanists and liquor-dealers, are learning the art of 



