tent we had given
them. Maddened at the thought of a blow from her son, the old lady
about sunset swallowed a large quantity of opium; and before the
circumstance was discovered, it was too late to apply a remedy. We
were told of it about eight o'clock at night, and found her lying in
her son's arms--tried every remedy at hand, but without success, and
about midnight she died. She loved her son, and he respected her; and
yet not a day passed without their having some desperate quarrel,
generally about the orphan daughter of her brother, who lived with
them, and was to be married, as soon as the cook could save out of
his pay enough money to defray the expenses of the ceremonies. The
old woman was always reproaching him for not saving money fast
enough. This little cousin had now stolen some of the cook's tobacco
for his young assistant; and the old lady thought it right to
admonish her. The cook likewise thought it right to add his
admonitions to those of his mother; but the old lady would have her
niece abused by nobody but herself, and she flew into a violent
passion at his presuming to interfere. This led to the son's outrage,
and the mother's suicide. The son is a mild, good-tempered young man,
who bears an excellent character among his equals, and is a very good
servant. Had he been less mild it had perhaps been better; for his
mother would by degrees have given up that despotic sway over her
child, which in infancy is necessary, in youth useful, but in manhood
becomes intolerable. 'God defend us from the anger of the mild in
spirit', said an excellent judge of human nature, Muhammad, the
founder of this cook's religion;[1] and certainly the mildest tempers
are those which become the most ungovernable when roused beyond a
certain degree; and the proud spirit of the old woman could not brook
the outrage which her son, so roused, had been guilty of. From the
time that she was discovered to have taken poison till she breathed
her last she lay in the arms of the poor man, who besought her to
live, that her only son might atone for his crime, and not be a
parricide.

There is no part of the world, I believe, where parents are so much
reverenced by their sons as they are in India, in all classes of
society. This is sufficiently evinced in the desire that parents feel
to have sons. The duty of daughters is from the day of their marriage
transferred entirely to their husbands and their husbands' parents,
on whom alone d