"
Would the English be shocked? Would they feel outraged? Would they be
amazed? Would they call the performance a desecration? That would all
happen. The pork-millionaires would be denounced in round terms; they
would be called hard names.
In the tomb at Mount Vernon lie the ashes of America's most honored son;
in the Abbey, the ashes of England's greatest dead; the tomb of tombs,
the costliest in the earth, the wonder of the world, the Taj, was built
by a great Emperor to honor the memory of a perfect wife and perfect
mother, one in whom there was no spot or blemish, whose love was his stay
and support, whose life was the light of the world to him; in it her
ashes lie, and to the Mohammedan millions of India it is a holy place; to
them it is what Mount Vernon is to Americans, it is what the Abbey is to
the English.
Major Sleeman wrote forty or fifty years ago (the italics are mine):
"I would here enter my humble protest against the quadrille and
lunch parties which are sometimes given to European ladies and
gentlemen of the station at this imperial tomb; drinking and dancing
are no doubt very good things in their season, but they are sadly
out of place in a sepulchre.
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