The Humour and Pathos of Anglo-Indian Life: Extracts from his brother's note-book, made by Dr. TicklemoreMayer, J. E.
General
The Humour and Pathos of Anglo-Indian Life: Extracts from his brother's note-book, made by Dr. Ticklemore
Mayer, J. E.
British -- India; India -- Social life and customs
Before she quitted Tollicherry, she had obtained possession of the
mangled remains of her husband, and had them embalmed, all but the
heart; this she had so burnt, under the guidance of an able chemist,
that the form of the organ only remained in the substance of a thin kind
of charcoal. The embalmed body she placed in a marble coffin or
sarcophagus, on which she placed, in an exquisitely carved marble vase
or urn, the representative atoms of her lover's heart. On the top of the
block of black marble that supported her husband's remains, and close
beside it, she placed an empty coffin and an empty vase. In this tomb
Aminè spent a large portion of her time, not only in prayer, nor even in
indulging her incurable sorrow, but in communing with her own soul, and
in striving, by reading and study, to school herself to suffer with
uncomplaining fortitude. Her garden and her flowers, when the heat would
permit, afforded her, morning and evening, some resource. Her large
charities, her embroidery with her maidens, and sometimes her lute,
enabled her to bear existence for some few years; but the shock she had
experienced had been more than she could long bear. She pined away
daily, and at last sunk down, without any special disease, to die. She
evidently rejoiced at her release from sorrow, and the last words she
breathed were, 'I shall now go to fill the vacant space beside my lord.'
She had, long before, repeatedly enjoined her people that, after burning
her heart without access of air, the charcoal left should be placed with
that of her husband, which injunction was held sacred, and was carried
out to the letter. She died equally beloved and lamented by all around
her, rich and poor, and was long remembered as the broken flower of
Persia. Around the tomb where lie the relics of this unhappy pair
innumerable small lamps are ever burning, and every day at sunrise young
Persian maidens deck the double urns with flowers.
We now return to Tollicherry, where Saul Jan and Kulmuck lie under
sentence of death. After the identification of Saul Jan as the leader of
the attacks on the distant house of Lutchmon Sing, the circumstantial
evidence was so strong, and so completely confirmatory of the previous
suspicions, that it may be said no one entertained the slightest moral
doubt as to the guilt of these two men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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