The Canton times. (Canton, Miss.) 1893-1906, 1895-01-18

| pCnCll tfdStu us uISI uB uTt, Ut llh
sons plumb-line measured its frs
wall, or architects compass swept it
first circle.
The Tai has sixteen great archet
windows, four at each corner. Also a
each of the four corners Vt the Ia
stands a minaret one hundred ant
thirty-seven feet high. Also at eacl
side of this building is a splendid
mosque of red sandstone Two hun
bred and fifty years has the TAI stood
and yet not wall is cracked, nor {
mosaic loosened, nor an arch sagged
nor panel dulled. The storms O
two hundred and fifty winters have
not married, nor the heats of two hun
bred and fifty summers disintegratet
a marble. There is no story o.
age written by MOSES on it,
white surface. Montaz, the queen
was beautiful, and Shah Jehan, the
king, l,fre proposed to let all the cen
| turtles of time know it. She was mar
ried at twenty years of age and died at
twenty-nine. Her life ended as an
other life began; as the rose bloomed
the rose bush persisted. To adorn this
dormitory of the dead, at the command
of the king Bagdad sent to this build
ing its carnelian, and Ceylon it's lapis
lazuli, and Punjab it's jasper, and Per-
STA its amethyst, and Thibet it's tur-
quoise, and Lanka its sapphire, and
Yemen its agate, and Punah its
diamonds; and blood-stones, and sar-
donyx, and chalcedony, and moss
agates are as common as though they
were pebbles. You find one spray of
vine beset with eighty, and another
with one hundred stones. Twenty
thousand men were twenty years in
building it, and, although the labor
was slave labor, and not paid for, the
building cost what would be about
sixty million dollars of our American
money. Some of the jewels have been
picked out of the walls by icono-
clasts or conquerors, and substi-
tutes of less value have taken
their places, but the vines, the
traceries, the arabesques, the span
drels, the entablatures are SO won
drous 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 the Koran is spelled out
in and on this august pile. The king
sleeps in the tomb beside the queen,
although he intended to build pal
ace as black as this vas white on the
side of the river for himself
to sleep in. Indeed, the foundation
of such a metropolis of black marble
is still there, and from the white to
the black temple of the dead bridge
was to cross; but the son dethroned
him and imprisoned him, and it is won
derful 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 delicately thin
that the sun shines through it as easily
as through glass. Look the world over |
and find SO much translucency; cano-
pies, traceries, lace work, embroideries |
If stone.
But thought while looking at that
palace for the dead all this construct
ID to cover handful of dust, but even
hat handful has probably gone from
he mausoleum. How much better it |
would have been to expend sixty mil
ion dollars, which the Tai Mahal cost,
or the living. What asylums it might
ouild for the sick, what houses for the
What improvement our CEN
ury has made upon other centuries in
fitting in honor of the departed me-
norial churches, memorial hospitals,
memorial reading rooms, memorial
'bservatories. BY all possible means
ct us keep the memory of departed
owed ones fresh in mind, and let there
Ne an appropriate headstone or monu-
nent in the cemetery, but there is
ividing line between reasonable COM
nemoration and wicked extravaganza.
he Tai Mahal has its uses as archi-
ectural achievement, eclipsing all
Their architecture, but as memorial
f departed wife and mother
expresses no more than the plain
st slab in many country grave
ard. The best monument we can
ny of us have built for us when we
re gone is in the memory of those
hose sorrows we have alleviated, in
he wounds we have healed, in the
indnesses we have done, in the igno-
lnce we have enlightened, in the re-
reant we have reclaimed, in the souls
re have saved! Such monument is
uilt out of material more lasting than
larble or bronze, and will stand amid
ne eternal splendors long after the
al Mahal of India shall have gone ;
own in the ruins of a world of which
was the costliest adornment. But /
to show you not only tomb ;
India, but unique heather temple,
nd it is temple underground.
And now we come near the famous