Studying Arabic in Mullins Library. On the same table as I rests a small unmarked volume, its pages coming apart at the binding. Open the cover to smell the browning paper. Buddhism and Buddhists in China, by Lewis Hodus, D.D., professor of Missions in China in the Kennedy School of Missions, Hartford, Connecticut; published by the MacMillan Company in 1924; and authorized by The Committee of Reference and Counsel of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America. Part of a series entitled The World's Living Religions, "a series of concise yet reliable presentations of the actual religious life (gasp!) of the non-Christian peoples of today and of Christianity's approach to them." Included among the nine volumes in the series: Primitive Religion in Southeastern Asia, Islam and Its Followers, and Hinduism in the Life of India. But the best, bar none:

The Religion of Lower Races as Illustrated by the African Bantu

And who ever said that scientific racism, colonial imperialism, and Christian missions weren't bedfellows?