It may have been the
funeral sermon, and probably was. I forgot to say that one of the
mourners remained behind when the others went away. This was the dead
man's son, a boy of ten or twelve, brown and handsome, grave and
self-possessed, and clothed in flowing white. He was there to burn his
father. He was given a torch, and while he slowly walked seven times
around the pyre the naked black man on the high ground poured out his
sermon more clamorously than ever. The seventh circuit completed, the
boy applied the torch at his father's head, then at his feet; the flames
sprang briskly up with a sharp crackling noise, and the lad went away.
Hindoos do not want daughters, because their weddings make such a ruinous
expense; but they want sons, so that at death they may have honorable
exit from the world; and there is no honor equal to the honor of having
one's pyre lighted by one's son. The father who dies sonless is in a
grievous situation indeed, and is pitied. Life being uncertain, the
Hindoo marries while he is still a boy, in the hope that he will have a
son ready when the day of his need shall come.
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