The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1895-01-19
eb,oel cut its f,rs. curve, or painters

first circle.
The Tai has sixteen great arched
windows, four at each corner. Also al
each of the four corners OF the TAI
stands a minarct one hundred and
thirty-seven feet high. Also at each
side Of this building is a splendid
mosque of red sandstone. Two hun
bred and fifty years has the TAI stood,
and vet not wall Is cracked, nor Q
mosaic loosened, nor an arch sagged,
nor a panel dulled. The storms OF
two hundred and fifty winters have
not married, nor the heats of two hum
drcd and fifty summers disinsegrated
marble. There is no story OF
age written by MOSES on its
white surface. Montaz, the queen,
was beautiful, and Shah Jehan, the
king, here 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 its lapis
lazuli, and Punjab it's jasper, and Per-
STA its amethyst, and Thibet its tur-
quoise, and Lanla it's 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
III anu oh thlo aux PllCs hC hAhS
sleeps in the tomb beside the queen,
he intended to build pal
ace us black as this was white on the
opposite side of the river for himself
to sleep in. Indeed, the foundation
OF such a metropolis of black marble
is still there, and nom the white to
the black temple of the dead bridge
was to cross; but the son dcthroned
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 ~ trellis work of
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, tra:eries, lace work, embroideries
of stors.
BuE thought while looking at that
palace for the dead, all this construct
ed to cover a handful of dust, but even
that handful has probably gone from
the mausoleum. How much better it
would have been to expend sixty mil
lion dollars, which the Tai Mahal cost,
for the living. What asylums it might
build for the sick, what houses for the
homeless! What improvement our CEN
fury has made upon other centuries in
lifting in honor of the departed me-
mortal churches, memorial hospitals,
reading rooms, memorial
BY all possible means
let us keep the memory of departed
loved ones fresh in mind, and let there
be an appropriate headstonc or monu-
ment in the cemetery, but there is
line between reasonable COM
and wicked extravaganza.
The TAI Mahal has it's uses as archi-
tectural achievement, eclipsing all
other architecture, but as memorial
Of a departed wife and mother
1t expresses no more than the plain
est slab in many country grave
yard. 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 1--WE have healed, in the
we have done, in the igno-
rance we have enlightened, in the re-
creant we have reclaimed, in the souls
we have saved! Such monument is
built out of material more lasting than
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 a unique heather temple,
and it is temple underground.
And now we come near the famous
temple hewn from one rock of porphy-
ry at least eight hundred years ago
On either side of the chief temple is a
chapel, these cnt out of the same stone.
So vast was the undertaking, and to
the Hindoo was so great the human
that they say the gods
scooped out the structure from the
rock, and carved the pillars, and hewed
its shape into gigantic idols, and dedi-
Gated 1t to all the grandeurs.
We climb many stone steps be-
fore we get to the gateways. The en-
trance to this temple has sculptured
doorkeepers leaning on sculptured
devils. How strange! But have seen
doorkeepers of churches and audi
forums who seemed to be leaning on
the demons of bad ventilation and as
phyxia. Doorkeepers ought to be
IL. -