Anna Harriette Leonowens

“ O, I wish you could be brought to see how much more beautiful this religion of P'hra Jesu is than that of Buddha; and then think of the beautiful 'Marie,' his Holy Mother, who is ever at his side, ready to whisper words of tender love and pity in behalf of such poor sinners as we are. I feel as if I should never go astray, or do any evil thing, now that I have the good priest to pray for me, and the Holy Mother and her Son to be my gods. ”

“ She sees the trees, the thatched roofs, the plantations, the fields, the tapering spires of the Temple of the Infinite, and a thousand small objects; she hears voices and cries that would have escaped her at another time, as she is dragged from the home of her parents to the prison cell of the doomed, but she cannot speak, or cry, or even think where she put the key. She knows that her mother is seated outside of the prison door, wailing and crying, and protesting that her child is innocent of the dreadful crime of which she is accused; and this is all that is clear to the stricken girl. ”

“ Combined with her fine organization, she inherited a passionate nature, and an intense love for the mountains and woods, the earth and sky, which were to her so many beautiful gods. To some she had been accustomed to offer flowers, to others fruit, oil, wine, honey, water. She always set apart a portion of every meal for her favorite god Dâvee, the earth-goddess. To such a nature only to live was worship. To see, to hear, to gather thoughts and pictures, to feel the throbbing pulses; to fill the eye with images of beauty, the heart with impulses of love and joy ”

“ I gave it, sealed with my ring, to Boon, who carried it off in great delight; and I laid myself down upon my couch to dream of an overflowing happiness. In the blessedness of the great love that absorbed every feeling of my heart, I loved even the king, whom I had most injured and deceived, with the loving devotion of a child.
"In the midst of my ecstatic dreams I fell asleep, and dreamed a dream, O, so different! As plainly as one sees in broad daylight, I saw myself bound in chains, and P'haya P'hi Chitt flung down a dreadful precipice. ”

“ They seemed to cry aloud to my inmost soul, saying as plainly as lips could speak, 'What is suffering, pain, or death, compared to truth? Be true to yourself. Be true to your love. If you love another, you love not yourself. Flinch not. Bear bravely all they can inflict.' I shuddered as the judges began to question me, but I shuddered more whenever I met Boon's eyes, so fixed, so steadfast, so earnest, so appealing. ”

“ In the middle of the dais were two ducal chairs of state. On one was seated a young girl, very closely veiled, on the other the young duke, now Chow P'haya Dhamaphat; over them is spread a canopy of white muslin, decorated with the sweetest white flowers.
The girl, beneath her white veil, thinks it all perfection, and her eyes light up, and her cheeks burn, and her heart beats in perplexing fashion; and Dhamaphat believes that he alone holds the key to the temple of Elysium. ”

“ I said, kindly; "you can't do everything at once; you must learn by degrees, and little by little, you know. No one grows good or clever at once."
"But I won't learn any more, even to grow good and clever. There's no use, no one will ever care for me or love me again. I wish they had let me die that time," she continued. "Bah! I could kill that stupid old consul who saved my life. It were better to be quartered, and cast to the crows and vultures, than to live here. [Pg 124] Every one orders me about as if I were a slave, and treats me like a dog. I wish I could drown myself and die." ”

“ You do not know that my mistress, Chow Chom Manda Ung, is mother-in-law to the king, and that her daughter, Princess P'hra Ong Brittry, is his favorite half-sister and queen. My only hope lies in a special pardon from my mistress herself."
"And your friends," said I, "do they know nothing of your cruel captivity?"
"Nothing, indeed. I have no opportunity to speak even to the slave-woman whose duty it is to feed us daily. And her lot is too sad already for her to be willing to run any great risk for me. ”

“ The strength that is in these slaves to suffer is the strength of love. Love combined with despair gives them the awful and wonderful power of utter self-sacrifice.
The rights which every man should enjoy in his wife, his children, and his own labor, and which should be the most sacred and inviolable rights, are here placed at the mercy of a master, and are oft-times to the slave the very fetters of his galling servitude. ”

“ A magnificent new Buddhist temple is seen gradually raising its head close by the side of an ancient one which has so far crumbled to decay that the bright sun pours down unchecked a flood of golden light on the tapering crown of a huge brass image of the Buddha, which sits with its hands folded in undisturbed and profound contemplation on its glittering altar. On the other side, as far as the eye can reach, stretch unlimited groves of bananas and extensive plantations of cocoanut and betel-nut palms. ”

“ I replied; "but I am afraid that I should not make a good Catholic, since I am disposed to question everything that does not accord with my own perceptions of the right and the true."
"Well, I suppose," said Rosa, "that our natures differ; all my life has its roots in the Roman Catholic Church. I never doubt, therefore I never question. The Holy Virgin and her Son are sufficient for me, and the good priest who absolves me from my sins. My only one sorrow is that my children are cast out of the pale of salvation by the foolish prejudices of their father." ”

“ P'hra Bâlât, whom you have condemned to torture and to death, has not sinned. He is innocent. The sin is mine, and mine only. I knew that I was a woman, but he did not. If I had known all that he has taught me since I became his disciple, I could not have committed the great sin of which I am accused. I would have tried, indeed and truly, I would have tried to endure my life in the palace, and would not have run away. O lady dear! believe that I am speaking the truth. ”

“ Deep in the glen, sloping down to the stream, amid picturesque and romantic surroundings, stood the old temple of Kalee Durga; and running along, like a huge, jagged shadow, dark even in the brightest sunlight, rose the roofs of the monastic dwellings of the Brahmin ascetics, from which the place is named.
I alighted, and told my syce to wait outside for me; but he, being a pious Hindoo, bestrode the pony and rode off, to return in a quarter of an hour with oil and fresh flowers and sweetmeats enough to propitiate a great many dark goddesses. ”

“ Happy memories, every sweet emotion he had known, came crowding upon him, as he once more recognized, in the partial darkness, the faint outlines of the images of his long-forgotten gods, Dâvee and Indra and Dhupiyâ.
There is compensation in all things. He had lost his child, and found his gods. Joy and sorrow are bound up in every event of life,—even as opposite poles are inseparable in the magnet. The pity is that the night of trouble is at times so dark that the interwoven gold with which Providence relieves the woof of calamity remains undiscovered. ”

“ The drowning man, overtaken by the supreme agony, lives, in an instant, through all his happy and unhappy past. In a single moment he sees the whole drama of his life reacted before him. Thus it was with Rama; he recalled with anguish the scenes of Smâyâtee's childhood, her youth and growing womanhood, all her early gladness, all her bright hopes and illusions, all her gifts of beauty and affection, which made one picture with her present degradation, and served only to darken the riddle of her life to him. ”

“ Under her lay a tattered fragment of matting, farther on a block of wood for a pillow, and on the other side were several broken Chinese umbrellas.
Growing more and more bewildered, I sat down and looked at the woman in a sort of helpless despair. The whole scene was startlingly impressive; the apathy, the deadness, and the barbarous cruelty of the palace life, were never more strikingly brought before me face to face. Here there was no doubting, no denying, no questioning the fact that this unhappy creature was suffering under some cruel wrong, which no one cared to redress. ”

“ Of the dead and dying there were a thousand or more, of living captives only two,—the Duke P'haya Si P'hifoor, and one faithful soldier, Rama Singalee. The rest had, at the first sound of the cannon, fled far beyond its range. Like a wave of the ocean it had swept out of sight. P'haya Si P'hifoor was carried to Bangkok, tried, and sentenced to death. A general amnesty was proclaimed, and the generous premier, Somdetch Ong Yai, took Rama into his own household, had him cared for and promoted to a place of trust. ”

“ On the peaks of several mountains adjoining the royal residence rise stately temples and p'hra-cha-dees. All over these mountains the workmen are still toiling, laying out the grounds into gardens and shrubberies. In the centre of many of them may be seen beautiful stone vases of Egyptian form, cut out of the self-same rock, and filled with gorgeous flowers. Attached to the palace is a school-house and a residence for the teacher, with a private chapel for the ladies; but no distinct "harem," or woman's city, as at Bangkok. ”

“ I am not the only one who has lost her baby. Everywhere children are dying, parents are dying, loved ones are dying, and everywhere they tell me that the dead are more numerous than the living. Shall I then think only of my own sorrow?'
"Thinking thus, she suddenly summoned courage to put away her sorrow for her dead baby, and she carried him to the forest and laid him down to rest under a tree; and having covered him over with tender leaves, and taking her last look of his loved face, she betook herself once more to the Buddha and bowed before him. ”

“ Amid hopes and fears, and innumerable plans, which were abandoned as soon as formed for new ones that seemed equally impracticable, we reached the prison of Tâmsèng.
What a dreadful spot it was in the night-time! And the very darkness was aggravated by the people around, who looked more savage and fiercer than wild beasts. Before and behind and on all sides there were rags and filth and wretchedness crowding upon us with the double darkness of night and misery. Some hideous women were jailers; for a few ticals and a promise not to tell upon them, they allowed us to go in and see the girl. ”

“ Long and desperately the women struggle for life, again and again they try to swim towards the bank, but the stronger waters carry them away in their irresistible grasp.
The high-priest of the temple of Adi Buddha Annando has taken shelter beneath the porch of his temple. He sees the empty boat and the struggling women; he hesitates. His vows forbid him to touch a woman, even his own mother, and still hold his office as a priest of Buddha. He sees the women throw up their arms as if imploring his aid. ”

“ It is natural to demand that beautiful ideas should be clothed with beautiful forms. It was therefore to me an outrage on the name of Christianity to find that while all around lay scenes of luxuriant beauty which brightened the eye and cheered the heart, the only Christian village in the vicinity of Bangkok, which should have been an embodiment of all that is pure and lovely, had been transformed by the greed and oppression of the local officers to a pestilential spot to fester and poison the pure air of heaven. ”

“ You seem to be midway in the air, looking down upon a city of temples and palaces, gardens, lakes, minarets, pagodas and p'hra-chai-dees; thousands of boats glide noiselessly over the silver floor that winds on forever. The great height hushes out even the joyous voices that are hushed nowhere else. In the gloom at the upper end of the river many a boatman, perched on the prow of his boat, seems like the Angel of Death guiding some helpless passenger to the silent shore. ”

“ Now they near the duke's palace; the odors of orange-flowers and spice-groves reach them, like airs that breathe from paradise.
Having come to the great hall, the Amazons take their places on one of the lowest steps, Smâyâtee seated between them; they are contented to chew their betel and to wait.
The hall is full of men. The work of branding and enrolling goes briskly on under the orders of a young nobleman, called Nai Dhamaphat, the grandson of Somdetch Ong Yai. Every now and then some persons are brought forward to be admonished, fined, or whipped. ”

“ In the centre of a very handsome square rise the majestic buildings of the Maha Phra Sâât, the roof of which is covered with tiles, beautifully varnished, and surmounted by gilded spires, while the walls are studded with sculptures, and the terraces decorated with large incense vases of bronze, the dark color and graceful forms of which stand in beautiful relief against the white marble background of the palace. ”