Here Beauty and Peace hold eternal honeymoon. Misery seems to have no place in this land of delight, but contentment ever reigns, and the happy Burman dreams away his life in a paradise of sunshine. No one who has visited this country can ever forget it, but learns to understand too well that fascination so well expressed by Mr. Kipling: "If you've 'eard the East a' callin', you won't never 'eed nought else."
I remember Burmah, too, as a land of picturesque buildings, of rich jewels, exquisite costumes, and beautiful graceful women. A land of kindly hearts, friendly welcomes, and ungrudging hospitality.
These are remembered when the last glint of the golden-domed pagoda has faded into the shadowy distance, and we sail away from the peaceful sunshine and the palm trees, westward ho! to this hurrying, bustling modern world, where, though beauty exists, we have no time to appreciate it, and where, like King Midas of old, we would turn all we touch to glittering gold, and for ever destroy its charm.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An English Girl's First Impressions of Burmah, by Beth Ellis