United States or Western Sahara ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


One of the mourner's told us that the fourteen-year-old heir to the throne, had not cared much, when all his playthings were taken from him, or even when his throne was taken, but that now he was inconsolable over the loss of his mother.

So the tale ran on with its accompaniment of song, its suggestion of regret. Once in the middle of a ballad a funeral passes in the street below. The mourner's chant sounds above the bourdon of the tom-tom, the wail of the saringis. "Hush, hush" cries Nur Jan, "let the dead pass in peace. It is not meet that the song of the dancing-girl should be heard upon the final journey."

Excitement naturally overcame many, and they rushed forward to the mourner's benches in front of the altar and cried out for mercy, or silently prayed for days and weeks till the light "broke upon them" and they went forth shouting for joy.

One of the disaffected old farmers, gruff and averse, could not refrain from administering a rebuke to Brent Kayle as crossing the expanse of saw-dust on his way to join the audience he encountered the youth in company with Valeria Clee, his recent partner. "Ai-yi, Brent," the old man said, "the last time I seen you uns I remember well ez ye war a-settin' on the mourner's bench."

I BLESS Thee for the sunshine on the hills, For Heaven's own dewdrops in the vales below, For rain, the parent cloud alike distils, On the fond bridegroom's joy the mourner's woe! And for the viewless wind, that gently blows Where'er it listeth, over field and flood, Whence coming, whither going, no man knows, Yet moved in secret at Thy will, Oh, God!

They were sitting near the spot where Morgan had laved his bruised feet in the river not many nights past. A whippoorwill was calling in the tangle of cottonwoods and grapevines that grew cool and dark on a little island below them, its plaint as sad as the mourner's own stricken heart.

"No, I ain't a believer in that enthoosiastic sense that fights its way to the mourner's bench an' manifests itse'f with groans that daunts hoot-owls into silence. Thar don't appear many preachers out West in my day. Now an' then one of these yere divines, who's got strayed or drifted from his proper range, comes buttin' his way into Wolfville an' puts us up a sermon, or a talkee-talkee.

But when he heard the news which had wet the young knight's eyes with tears, his own lips also quivered, and his deep, manly tones faltered as he laid his heavy hands on the mourner's shoulders and gazed tearfully into his eyes. At last he exclaimed mournfully: "My poor, poor boy! Pray to Him to whom we owe all that is good, and who tries us with the evil.

"She told me that people went down to the mourner's bench and prayed and then they would get up and shout and say they had religion, and that was all she knew about it." "You went to the wrong one when you went to your aunt 'Liza. And what did you do after she told you?" "Why, I went down in the garden and prayed and I got up and shouted, but I didn't get any religion. I guess I didn't try right."

One of John Nicholson's native adorers killed himself on news of that warrior's death, saying, 'What is left worth living for? This was not a sacrifice to the Manes of Nicholson. The sacrifice of the mourner's hair, as by Achilles, argues a similar indifference to personal charm.