Lost Horizon

by James Hilton

It was a lead, and the American accepted it without the slightest reluctance. “High finance,” he said, “is mostly a lot of bunk.”

He recalled a sentence penned by Gordon during the last days at Khartoum—“I would sooner live like a Dervish with the Mahdi than go out to dinner every night in London.”

You will be aware, anyhow, that Nestorian Christianity was widespread throughout Asia during the Middle Ages, and that its memory lingered long after its actual decay. In the seventeenth century a Christian revival was impelled directly from Rome through the agency of those heroic Jesuit missionaries whose journeys, if I may permit myself the remark, are so much more interesting to read of than those of St. Paul.

He was not an ascetic; he enjoyed the good things of the world, and was careful to teach his converts cooking as well as catechism.

“And your education thus continued?” Conway gave a shrug. “Perhaps the exhaustion of the passions is the beginning of wisdom, if you care to alter the proverb.” “That also, my son, is the doctrine of Shangri-La.” “I know. It makes me feel quite at home.”

Many were engaged in writing manuscript books of various lands; one (Chang said) had made valuable researches into pure mathematics; another was coordinating Gibbon and Spengler into a vast thesis on the history of European civilization.

But it is our tradition, if I may permit myself the paradox, that we are never slaves to tradition.