When I try to account for this effect I find no difficulty about it.  I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it.  We get almost all our wonders at second hand.  We are eager to see any celebrated thing—­and we never fail of our reward; just the deep privilege of gazing upon an object which has stirred the enthusiasm or evoked the reverence or affection or admiration of multitudes of our race is a thing which we value; we are profoundly glad that we have seen it, we are permanently enriched from having seen it, we would not part with the memory of that experience for a great price.  And yet that very spectacle may be the Taj.  You cannot keep your enthusiasms down, you cannot keep your emotions within bounds when that soaring bubble of marble breaks upon your view.  But these are not your enthusiasms and emotions—­they are the accumulated emotions and enthusiasms of a thousand fervid writers, who have been slowly and steadily storing them up in your heart day by day and year by year all your life; and now they burst out in a flood and overwhelm you; and you could not be a whit happier if they were your very own.  By and by you sober down, and then you perceive that you have been drunk on the smell of somebody else’s cork.  For ever and ever the memory of my distant first glimpse of the Taj will compensate me for creeping around the globe to have that great privilege.

But the Taj—­with all your inflation of delusive emotions, acquired at second-hand from people to whom in the majority of cases they were also delusions acquired at second-hand—­a thing which you fortunately did not think of or it might have made you doubtful of what you imagined were your own what is the Taj as a marvel, a spectacle and an uplifting and overpowering wonder, compared with a living, breathing, speaking personage whom several millions of human beings devoutly and sincerely and unquestioningly believe to be a God, and humbly and gratefully worship as a God?

He was sixty years old when I saw him.  He is called Sri 108 Swami Bhaskarananda Saraswati.  That is one form of it.  I think that that is what you would call him in speaking to him—­because it is short.  But you would use more of his name in addressing a letter to him; courtesy would require this.  Even then you would not have to use all of it, but only this much: 

Sri 108 Matparamahansrzpairivrajakacharyaswamibhaskaranan
dasaraswati.

You do not put “Esq.” after it, for that is not necessary.  The word which opens the volley is itself a title of honor “Sri.”  The “108” stands for the rest of his names, I believe.  Vishnu has 108 names which he does not use in business, and no doubt it is a custom of gods and a privilege sacred to their order to keep 108 extra ones in stock.  Just the restricted name set down above is a handsome property, without the 108.  By my count it has 58 letters in it.  This removes the long German words from competition; they are permanently out of the race.