. T. DeWitt Talmage : his life and work : biographical edition . lifetime. Thebox was on the shoulders of four men. The procession of weeping women wasled by one whom I supposed to be the mother of the dead child. She had in herhands a narrow piece of blue cloth about a yard long, which she lifted into the airnow by one hand and now by the other, and as if in effort to break it and nodoubt carrying out the Oriental custom of rending in grief. I thought I could seeher sorrow was genuine, and it was the real mother bewailing her dead, and so nodoubt there was as much heartbreak in the lamentatio
. T. DeWitt Talmage : his life and work : biographical edition . lifetime. Thebox was on the shoulders of four men. The procession of weeping women wasled by one whom I supposed to be the mother of the dead child. She had in herhands a narrow piece of blue cloth about a yard long, which she lifted into the airnow by one hand and now by the other, and as if in effort to break it and nodoubt carrying out the Oriental custom of rending in grief. I thought I could seeher sorrow was genuine, and it was the real mother bewailing her dead, and so nodoubt there was as much heartbreak in the lamentation as there is when an Ameri-can mother bemoans her childlessness. There may also have been other relativesin the throng who were agonized. But the rest of the crowd seemed to dramatizebereavement, and careful inspection discovered the tearless eyes, and that thevwere enacting something that seemed called for by the proprieties of the occa-sion. The corpse was carried into a sacred enclosure, and two or three men went 158 T. DE WITT TALMAGE—HIS LIFE AND WORK. PROCESSION OF THE MAHMAL FROM CAIRO TO MECCA IN THE HOLY LAND 159 through genuflexions which meant no doubt much to them but nothing to us;meanwhile the women of the procession sat down at the distance of a city blockaway from the enclosure, but the men sat nearer by. Then the box, with thefloating tresses of the departing girl was brought out, and the procession resumedits march to the grave, and the wild and bitter cry again ascended. I followed to the gates of the cemetery and was passing in, when my friendcalled attention to the fact that we had no right to enter. Some twenty of thewomen were, by angry voice and violent gesticulation, forbidding our going evidently discovered that we were strangers and of another nationality andreligion, and our intrusion would be a sacrilege. So we halted, but we had seenfor the first time the type of an Oriental burial. It was to us a deeply sad andsolemn spectacle. No eleme
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