R bad ses ake ง At six o'clock I gave orders to awaken the nurses and order them to prepare their quarters for the reception of the wounded. At half past six an Army Hospital Corps man came to me in the ward: At nine o'clock in the evening they | uous. They never stopped coming; they arrived, one of the juniors having ridden never gave us a moment's rest. 05 out in the moonlight to meet them. He reported them completely exhausted; informed me that he had recommended them to go straight to bed; and was altogether more enthusiastic about the matter than I personally or officially cared to see. He handed me a pencil note from my chief at headquarters, explaining that he had not written me a despatch because he had nothing but a J pen, with which instrument he could not make himself legible. It struck me that he was suffering from a plethora of assistance, and was anxious to reduce his staff. life the 00 I sent my enthusiastic assistant to the nurses' quarters with a message that they were not to report themselves to me until they had had a night's rest, and turned in. At midnight I was awakened by the orderly, and summoned to the tent of the officer in command. This youth's face was considerably whiter than his linen. He was consulting with his second-incommand, a boy of twenty-two or thereabouts. A man covered with sand and blood was sitting in a hammock-chair, rubbing his eyes and drinking something out of a tumbler. "News from the front?" I inquired without ceremony, which hindrance we had long since dispensed with. "Yes, and bad news." It certainly was not pleasant hearing. Some one mentioned the word disaster, and we looked at each other with hard, anxious eyes. I thought of the women, and almost decided to send them back before daylight. In a few moments a fresh man was roused out of his bed, and sent full gallop through the moonlight across the desert to headquarters, and the officer in command began to regain confidence. I think he extracted it from the despatch-bearer's tumbler. After all, he was not responsible for much. He was merely a connectinglink, a point of touch between two greater men. It was necessary to get my men to work at once, but I gave particular orders to leave the nurses undisturbed. Disaster at the front meant hard work at the rear. We all knew that, and endeavored to make ready for a sudden rush of wounded. The rush began before daylight. As they came in we saw to them, dressing their wounds and packing them as closely as possible. But the stream was contin "Shockin' case, sir, just come in," he said. "Officer. Gun busted, sir." "Take him to my quarters,' I said, wiping my instruments on my sleeve. In a few minutes I followed, and on entering my little room the first thing I saw was a pair of yellow boots. There was no doubt about the boots and the white duck trousers, and although I could not see the face, I knew that this was Sammy Fitz-Warrener come back again. A woman one of the nurses for whom he had pleaded- was bending over the bed with a sponge and a basin of tepid water. As I entered she turned upon me a pair of calmly horror-stricken eyes. "Oh!" she whispered meaningly, stepping back to let me approach. I had no time to notice then that she was one of those largely built women, with perfect skin and fair hair, who make one think of what England must have been before Gallic blood got to be so widely disseminated in the race. "Please pull down that mat from the window," I said, indicating a temporary blind which I had put up. She did so promptly, and returned to the bedside, falling into position as it were, awaiting my orders. I bent over the bed, and I must confess that what I saw there gave me a thrill of horror which will come again at times so long as I live. I made a sign to Sister to continue her task of sponging away the mud, of which one ingredient was sand. "Both eyes," she whispered, "are destroyed." "Not the top of the skull," I said, "you must not touch that." For we both knew that our task was without hope. As I have said, I knew something of Fitz-Warrener's people, and I could not help lingering there, where I could do no good, when I knew that I was wanted elsewhere. Suddenly his lips moved, and Sister, kneeling down on the floor, bent over him. I could not hear what he said, but I think she did. I saw her lips frame the whisper "Yes" in reply, and over her She returned to her position by the bedside, with one arm laid across his chest. Presently he began whispering again, and at intervals she answered him. It suddenly occurred to me that, in his unconsciousness, he was mistaking her for some one else, and that she, for some woman's reason, was deceiving him purposely. I In a few moments I was sure of this. I tried not to look; but I saw it all. saw his poor blind hands wander over her throat and face, up to her hair. "What is this?" he muttered quite distinctly, with that tone of self-absorption which characterizes the sayings of an unconscious man. "What is this silly cap? " His fingers wandered on over the snowy linen until they came to the strings. As an aspirant to the title of gentleman, I felt like running away - many doctors know this feeling; as a doctor, I could only stay. His fingers fumbled with the strings. Still Sister bent over the bed. Perhaps she bent an inch or two nearer. One hand was beneath his neck, supporting the poor, shattered head. He slowly drew off the cap, and his fingers crept lovingly over the soft, fair bair. In a few moments all her hair was about her shoulders. I had never thought that she might be carrying such glory quietly hidden beneath the simple nurse's cap. "That is better," he said, "that is better." And he let all the hairpins fall on the coverlet. "Now, you are my own Marny," he murmured. "Are you not?" She hesitated one moment. "Yes, dear!" she said softly. "I am your own Marny." With her disengaged hand she stroked his blanching cheek. There was a certain science about her touch, as if she had once known something of these matters. Lovingly and slowly the smoke-grimed fingers passed over the wonderful hair, smoothing it. Then he grew more daring. He touched her eyes, her gentle cheeks, the quiet, strong lips. He slipped to her shoul der, and over the soft folds of her black dress. "Been gardening?" he asked, coming to the bib of her nursing apron. It was marvellous how the brain, which was laid open to the day, retained the consciousness of one subject so long. "Yes-dear," she whispered. "Your old apron is all wet!" he said reproachfully, touching her breast where the blood—his own blood was slowly drying. His hand passed on, and as it touched her, I saw her eyes soften into such a wonderful tenderness, that I felt as if I were looking on a part of Sister's life which was sacred. I saw a little movement as if to draw back—then she resolutely held her position. But her eyes were dull with a new pain. I wonder - I have wondered ever since what memories that poor senseless wreck of a man was arousing in the woman's heart by his wandering touch. Marny," he said, "Marny. It was not too hard waiting for me?" "No, dear." "It will be all right now, Marny. The bad part is all past." "Yes." "Marny, you remember I left-Marny- I want lips." I knelt suddenly and slipped my hand within his shirt, for I saw something in his face. As Sister's lips touched his I felt his heart give a great bound within his breast, and then it was still. that etly When she lifted her face it was as pale | ities do not allow them to beat to death as his. I must say that I felt like crying- a feeling which had not come to me for twenty years. I busied myself purposely with the dead man, and when I had finthe ished my task I turned and found Sister filling in the papers her cap neatly tied her golden hair hidden. I signed the certificate, placing my name beneath hers. 20 For a moment we stood. Our eyes met, and — we said nothing. She moved towards the door, and I held it open while she passed out. Two hours later I received orders from the officer in command to send the nurses back to headquarters. Our men were falling back before the enemy. HENRY SETON MERRIMAN. From The Nineteenth Century. AN INDIAN FUNERAL SACRIFICE. "WISHING the good of your country, serve the Kine, otherwise you waste all your wealth. The Cow should be protected. See how the strength of the Christian religion is increased by means of preachers and the distribution of cate chisms! I, too, will publish a periodical called the Propagator of the Cow Religion. Those subscribers who remit their subscriptions in advance will receive gratis a picture of the Mother Cow, with colored borders. This is a work for the benefit of the country, written by the servant of the Cow, preacher for the preservation of the Kine, and one desirous of kindness." This curious amalgam of old-world religion and of latter-day journalism was freely distributed at Indian railway stations within the last few months, and is a strange contrast to the resolutions of the recent Indian National Congress, based upon an assumed demand by the people of India for representative government of the Western type. It is only another proof of the diverse influences at work and of the widely different customs prevalent in British India, that, while "the servant of the Cow, and one desirous of kindness" is circulating his advertisements, the survivors of a small and diminishing "tribe of rather fair people on the mountains in the kingdom of the Zamorin," who were described in 1672 as adorers of their kine, consider themselves aggrieved because the author with clubs as many buffaloes as they please at their annual funeral sacrifices, one of which has just taken place. The Archbishop of Goa, Aleixo de Menezes, who directed the spiritual concerns of the subjects of his most faithful Majesty the king of Portugal upon the storied western coast of India, was told in 1600 that a race of Christians called Todas lived fifty leagues away from his remotest church, and he sent a Jesuit father to tend these wandering sheep, which father, however, reported that he found no Christianity in them; and seventy years later the procurator-general of the barefooted Carmelites said: 66 These Todas pray to the buffaloes by which they live, and hang a miserable little bell upon their necks, which is enough to ensure them adoration. Though the buffaloes are very often killed by tigers, yet the Todas do not slacken in their worship." Of this curious race, by some held to be aborigines of southern India, by some to be Manichæans, and by others to be one of the lost tribes of Israel, but six or seven hundred remain, scattered in tiny villages of oven-shaped wicker houses over the breezy downs of the Nilgiri hills. Whatever be their origin and probably they are aboriginal inhabitants of the land they live in-they worship nature in its loveliest moods, and ever build on sloping lawns of emerald turf, by rippling rills of limpid water, and alongside little woods of ilex, eugenia, and rhododendron, nestling in the folds of hills, whence a glorious prospect stretches of hot and shimmering plain below, dotted with giant ant-hills, as they seem to the eye, with silver patches of irrigation lakes sparkling in the sun, beyond which, rising above a wall of fleecy clouds, looms in the distant view another range of mountains as lofty and precipitous as the Nilgiris themselves. Pastoral folk, idle and picturesque, they live on the milk and produce of their bufaloes, and, as the unknown is dreaded here as elswehere, their neighbors, who live by the sweat of their brow, much fearing what they do not understand, pay them fees as wizards for value received in occult matters, and as a retaining fee for their aid in counteracting the spells of the dread men of the slopes, who do their business with beasts of prey, track the bison, snare the leopard a fearsome people, whose women "leave their children in the charge of tigers when they go forth to cultivate the barley and the amaranth and to gather honey in the woods. They have curious stories of the crea- | togas flutter in the breeze as the merry-gotion of mankind - how the first man round whirls around as it does in an Encreated a fellow-man out of the earth, mak-glish fair, at the rate of a farthing for thirty ing the first woman from one of his ribs. revolutions, and the swinging boats sway They have a kind of trinity consisting of a with their aërial freight. In a long, imfather, a son, and a kite-the last mem- promptu lane shopkeepers from the neighber, born of a pumpkin, the offspring boring village of Ootacamund, eight miles of the first woman, into which life was away, display their wares: sugarcane for breathed by her husband. They have, too, bright, white teeth to munch, rock cakes a heaven and a hell, the latter a dismal browned with burnt sugar, light, fried stream full of leeches across which the rice, cigars and cabbage-rolled cigarettes; souls of the departed have to pass upon oranges and ginger-beer of course, but a single thread, which breaks beneath the also cocoanuts, cinnamon, dates, wheatweight of those burdened with sin, but cakes, tändstickor matches, and sugarstands the slight strain of a good man's candy. Nor does this conclude the soul. enumeration; needles and pins are not wanting, nor combs for the glossy hair of Toda maidens, nor looking-glasses wherein to braid their locks and curl their ringlets. The Malabaris weigh their spices by means of a most interesting implement, the exact replica of a bishop's crozier, the bronze at one end curled and perforated in a cunning fashion, at the other pointed like an alpenstock. A loop in the middle fixed to the finger of the seller holds this episcopal measure poised, while a string to which the plate depends is moved up and down the staff, steel dots whereon indicate the weight contained within the scale. When a Toda dies he is swathed in a new cloth, his toes are tied together with red thread, and earth is cast upon his body. Two of his buffaloes are slain before him, and his hands placed in turn upon their horns, while his relations mourn with streaming tears. Some grain, sugar, rupees, and tobacco are then wrapped in the dead man's cloth, a piece of his skull, his hair, and his finger-nails are removed, clarified butter is smeared upon the fragrant wood of the pyre, and the body is reduced to ashes, which are cast to the winds. The portion of the skull, the hair, and the finger-nails are carefully preserved till the occurrence of the great annual festival, to describe which is the object of this paper. Beyond the bazaar, beside the wood, is the house of mourning, built of new bamboos, oven-shaped, and closed in front with fresh-sawn planks of jungle-wood, Once for all in the course of the year the through which peep the female relatives Todas celebrate with great splendor the of the deceased persons; while the males, funeral obsequies of those who have died, crouched upon the floor, now wail and or, as they say, have taken the leap over now watch, at one moment are drowned in the great precipice into the bottomless tears, and at another curiously staring at abyss, during the preceding year. This the strangers. Around the little oven ceremony is called the dry, and that house are hung the grain-measures used above described which takes place on by the deceased and the bowls from which the actual occurrence of each death the wet, funeral. Let us approach the high lawns above the sheer cliffs, below which flows the river dividing the Nilgiris from the territories of the Maharajah of Mysore, and here we first are struck by the bright and animated crowd, light-hearted as the pellucid air of the hills can make them, daring and successful as to color as only Orientals can be, and enjoying a holiday as they alone can whose hearts are young. The childlike element so often noticed in the Hindus is nowhere more prominently displayed than in the Todas and other tribes of the Nilgiris. Grave-looking greybeards are sitting astride open-mouthed, tonguehanging wooden horses, burlesque tigers, and long-trunked elephants, and ample they drank buttermilk; and around each and all of these are chains of silver and gold, thin and inexpensive, but delicate in workmanship, from which hang tiny little coins, silver or gold as the case may be. Within the mourning house, too, are the hair and nails and the pieces of skull preserved since the wet funeral of each of those whose obsequies are celebrated today. The occupants of this wicker house of woe remain therein for three whole days, but come out to take their meals. Against the low-arched roof leans a tall, tapering stick, green from the wood, around which, at intervals of a foot or so, are bound red and blue bandages of yarn, from which. hang bundles of little shells, so arranged as to look like a bunch of unopened blossoms of tuberose. Upon the roof, above a trident of three sticks, squats a curlybearded, hirsute, and swarthy Toda, holding in his hand a palmyra-leaf umbrella, laced with little silver chains and hung about with small silver coins. All these pretty things are burnt, together with the hair, nails, and skull fragments of the dead, in the false dawn of the morning succeeding the sacrifice. 377 cuisine looks up as some lichens fall into the soup, and excitedly warns off a boy who from the tree above was looking over the heads of the others into the kraal. of woe the midday meal is being prepared, just within the wood. In a colossal cauldron, with big flat handles like a mastiff's ears, simmers pumpkin soup, clarified butter boils in earthenware vessels, and in great wicker baskets are snowy mountains of well-boiled rice. The floor of the kitchen is a little mossy flat, and the fronds of ferns hang over the utensils; On the turf beside, the Todas are danc- the roof is an arch of verdure, through ing in a ring, each with his arms inter- which shafts of bright sunlight strike upon laced with those of his immediate neigh-the pots and pans below. The chef de bors. Forty or fifty big, bearded men beat the ground in solemn step and rhythmical progression, hoarsely ejaculating "Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!" Some hold in their hands massive clubs, others umbrellas an enBeside the kitchen a little shed has sign of dignity in the East, and not a mere been constructed of uprights and crosssunshade. As they jump around, their beams, with boughs for wall and roof. thick masses of glossy black hair, below Herein the women eat, on this great day the graceful turbans, rise and fall to the only, and not because caste or custom prestep. Some wear bands of beaten gold vails with these polyandrous daughters of around their necks, others cylinders of the downs, who neither on this nor on any silver. All are wrapped in ample robes of other occasion use screen or veil. When plain white cotton, and silver anklets ring young they are often good-looking, after a in the clear air, a more acceptable accom- somewhat sensual fashion. They have paniment than the music of the magi- skin of a light bamboo color, white, even cians' band. The black and carrion-eating teeth, ample black hair and eyes, a gracetribe of magic-working Kotas by pre-ful figure, and regular features -a fairly scriptive right supply the music on these occasions. Their instruments are "scrannel pipes of wretched straw" and drums of untanned buffalo hide, the hairs of which adhere to all portions but those receptive of the blow. One of the Todas had been taken by Barnum into his show. He spoke a little English, and said he had been to Australia, America, Liverpool, and England. In the course of his travels he had lost the dignified demeanor of his race, and, seizing and pulling a bystanding Toda's beard, he said, "Once I not shave, like this!" The temper and gravity of the untravelled one were proof even against this provocation. The traveller seemed on good terms with his neighbors, from whose simple ways he had far departed, and now and again would join the ring of dancers, like an inebriated Bacchanal among the conscript fathers. We often hear of the ceremonies which Brahmins have to perform on their return from Europe. The Todas make short work of these, and are said to have received Barnum back into the fold after removing his hat and trousers and subjecting him to the ordeal of total immersion. The kraal in which the sacrificial buffaloes are pent is hidden by a wall of spectators standing on its circular stone enclosure, and between it and the house attractive whole. Their grief is abysmal, and so is their curiosity; and if their expression varies little, it changes with startling rapidity from one to another of its few known phases. For Within the kraal are twelve female buffaloes, two for each of the deceased, and facing them upon the wall stand as many active young Todas, each holding in his hand a club somewhat taller than himself, of fresh jungle-wood cut at one end to a point-a heavy and formidable weapon whether used as goad or bludgeon. merly the poor beasts were beaten on the back till their spines were paralyzed, and then half led, half dragged to the slaughter. For many years past this cruel prac tice has been prohibited, and the staves are now symbolical of the past rather than of use in the present, though their sharp points may be needed at any moment for protection against an infuriated buffalo. Suddenly the dozen athletes leap into the kraal. Six cast down their clubs and fling themselves upon the frightened beasts. Two men for each buffalo, they hang by its broad, branching horns, blindfolding its eyes, while it charges hither and thither, dashes them against the circular wall, or strives to trample them under their feet. The animals for the most part keep together in a close crowd, or race around the kraal; but sometimes |