Connecticut western news., 1895-01-10

Twenty thousand men were 20 years in building it, and although the labor was slave labor, and not paid for, the build ing cost what would be about $60, 000,- 900 of our American money. Some of the jewels have been picked out of the wall by iconoclasts or conquerors, and substitutes of less value have taken their places, but the vines, the traceries, the arabesques, the spandrels, the entabla- lures are so wondrous that you feel like dating the rest of your life from the day you first saw them. In letters of black marble the whole of tho Koran is spelled out in and on this august pile. The king sleeps in the tomb beside the queen, al- though he intended to build palace as black as this was white on the opposite side of the river for himself to sleep in. Indeed the foundation of such a necrop- oils of black marble is still there, and from the white to the black temple of the dead a bridge was to cross, but the son dethroned him and imprisoned him, and it is wonderful that the king had any place at all in which to be buried. Instead of windows to let in the light upon the two tombs, there is a trellis work of marble, marble cut so delicate ly thin that the sun shines through it as easily as through glass. Look the world over and find so much transluoency, oanopies, traoeries, lace work, embroid- cries of stone.
 We had heard of the wonderful reso- nance of this Tai, and so tried it. suppose there are more sleeping echoes in that building waiting to be wakened by the human voice than in any build ing ever constructed. uttered one word, and there seemed descending invisible choirs in full chant, and there was re- verberation that kept on long after one would have expected it to cease. When a line of hymn was sung, there were replying, rolling. rising, falling, inter- weaving sounds that seemed modulated by beings seraphic There were aerial sopranos and bassos, soft, high, deep, tremulous, emotional, commingling. It was like an antiphonal of heaven. But there are four or five Tai Mahals. It has one appearance at sunrise, another at noon, another at sunset and another by moonlight. Indeed the silver trowel of the moon, and the golden trowel of the sunlight, and the leaden trowel of the storm build and rebuild the glory, so that it never seems twice alike. It has all moods, all complexions, all gram deurs. From the top of the Tai, which is 250 feet high, springs spire 80 feet higher, and that is enameled gold. What an anthem in eternal rhythm Lyrics and elegies in marble. Sculptured ho- sanpa. Masonry as of supernatural hands Mighty doxology in stone. I shall see nothing to equal it till I see the great white throne, and on it him from whose face the earth and heavens flee away.
 The Pride of India
 The Tai is the pride of India, and es- pecially of Mohammedanism. An Eng fish officer at the fortress told us that when during the general mutiny ill 1857 the Mohammedans proposed insurrection at Agra the English government aimed the guns of the fort at the Tai and said, "You make insurrection, and that same day we will blow your Tai to atoms, !" and that threat ended the disposition for mutiny at Agra
 But thought while looking at that palace for the dead all this constructed to cover handful of dust, but even that handful has probably gone from the mausoleum. How much better it would have been to expend $60, 900, 900, which the Tai Mahal cost, for the living. What asylums it might have built for the sick, what houses for the homelessl What inn provement our century has made upon other centuries in lifting in honor of the departed memorial churches, memorial hospitals, memorial reading rooms, me- morial observatories. By all possible means let us keep the memory of de- parted loved ones fresh in mind, and let there be an appropriate headstone or monument in the cemetery, but there is Q dividing line between reasonable com memoration and wicked extravaganza. The Tai Mahal has its uses as an archi- teotural achievement, eclipsing all other architecture, but as a memorial of de- parted wife and mother it expresses no more than the plainest slab in many a country graveyard. The best monument we can any of us have built for us when we are gone is in the memory of those whose sorrows we have alleviated, in the wounds we have healed, in the kind nesses we. have done, in the ignorance we have enlightened, in the reoreant we have reclaimed, in the souls we have saved. Such a mapnnent is knilt out of material more lasting thah marble or bronze and will stand amid the eternal splendors long after the Tai Mahal of India shall have gone down in the ruins of world of which it was the costliest adornment But promised to show you not only tomb of India, but unique heather temple, and it is a temple un- derground.
 With miners candle we had seen something of the underside of Australia, as at Gimpie, as with guides torch we had seen at different times something of the underside of America, as in Nam moth cave, but we are now to enter one of the sacred cellars of India, common ly called the Elephanta caves. We had it all to ourselves, the steam yacht that was to take us about 15 miles over the  harbor of Bombay and between enchant- ed islands, and along shores whose curves and gulches and pictured rocks gradual ly prepared the mind for appreciation of the most unique spectacle in India. The morning had been full of thunder and lightning and deluge, but the at mospheric agitations had ceased, and the cloudy ruins of the storm were piled up in the heavens, huge enough and darkly purple enough to make the skies as grandly picturesque as the earthly scenery amid which we moved.
 The Idols of. Elephanta-
 After an hours cutting through the water we came to the long pier reach ing from the island called Elephanta. It is an island small of girth, but 600 feet high. It declines into the marshes of mangroye. But the whole island is one tangle of foliage and verdure; convolv- ulus creeping the ground: mosses climb