That," he added meditatively, "was in my fiftieth incarnation of this present Round--no, I am thinking of another army--in my seventy-third."[*] [*] As students of their lives and literature will be aware, it is common for Buddhist priests to state positively that they remember events which occurred during their previous incarnations .-- ed.
Here Leo began a great laugh, but I managed to kick him beneath the table and he turned it into a sneeze.

This was fortunate, as such ribald merriment would have hurt the old man's feelings terribly.

After all, also, as Leo himself had once said, surely we were not the people to mock at the theory of re-incarnation, which, by the way, is the first article of faith among nearly one quarter of the human race, and this not the most foolish quarter.
"How can that be--I ask for instruction, learned One--seeing that memory perishes with death ?" "Ah!" he answered, "Brother Holly, it may seem to do so, but oftentimes it comes back again, especially to those who are far advanced upon the Path.

For instance, until you read this passage I had forgotten all about that army, but now I see it passing, passing, and myself with other monks standing by the statue of the big Buddha in front yonder, and watching it go by.

It was not a very large army, for most of the soldiers had died, or been killed, and it was being pursued by the wild people who lived south of us in those days, so that it was in a great hurry to put the desert between it and them.