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Show ADVENTURERS' CLUB , -I HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES ; J' OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF! "Her Husband's Funeral Pyre" HELLO EVERYBODY: India! Land of mystery and "Suttee! " Suttee, as you know, is the quaint little Indian custom of burning the widow on the funeral pyre of her dea'd husband. It is a Hindu practice of long standing and from this gruesome sacrifice the soul of the immolated widow is supposed to receive a special blessing and follow her husband's spirit into that land of greater mystery the hereafter! The British government has prohibited Suttee for many years but it is suspected that many secret cremations still claim their living victims. Mrs. Miriam Richardson of Caldwell, N. J., makes the page today with a tale of Suttee and she knows her stuff. Miriam's parents were missionaries in India for a great many years. Their grass and mud bungalow was situated in a no-man's-land of trees, underbrush and jungle grass in the Central Provinces, which was in the heart of a vast jungle district The jungles were infested with wild animals. For 20 years of her life she was lulled to sleep by the gruff, coughing roars of man-eating tigers, the weird yowling of cowardly jackals and the insane laughs of hyenas! Late one night, Miriam says, there came a frantic knocking on the bungalow door with calls of "Memsahib, Memsahib!" Her mother hastily opened the door, thinking that perhaps one of the Christian natives had His hand was to light the fire! The fire that would consume his living mother and dead father! been fatally mauled by a tiger. An old native woman stood there wringing her hands. Her daughter whose husband had just died was about to commit Suttee and the woman wanted the help of Miriam's father and mother to save her. Miriam's Mother Starts on Mercy Errand. They started at once, a chokadar night watchman being left to guard over Miriam. Her father grabbed a lantern and the distracted native woman led the way through a wild jungle path. Soon the beating of tom-toms throbbed all around them and they came to a clearing lit by hand torches. In the center of the clearing, Miriam says, was a funeral pyre a prepared bonfire of dried wood on which reposed the body of the -dead man. Around it, at respectful distances, thronged the native crowd. Through the crowd and near the pyre wandered Hindu priests, their faces bearing the painted ghastly gray ashen marks of their calling. "The native woman pulled my mother to the women's quarters," Miriam writes, "here no man was allowed. My father remained with the men in an effort to dissuade them. In the center of a wailing group of women sat the young widow. She swayed to and fro, moaning and beating her breast with her fists. From the dull gleam of her eyes, mother knew that she had been drugged and hardly realized the frightful fate that was in store for her. "Mother went straight to her and putting an arm around the girl started a fight against time. She wanted to delay matters long enough for the effects of the drug to wear off so that she could reason with the distracted girl. Once a little boy his naked body covered with ashes and paint interrupted her. The boy was the widow's son. He carried a lighted torch in his little hands and he had been sent, he said, by the priests to get his mother. His hand was to light the fire! the fire that would consume his living . mother and dead father!" Can you imagine how that kind of a proposition would appeal to an American mother? An innocent youngster being hoodwinked into thinking he was performing a holy act by actually burning his mother alive! WITH HIS OWN HAND! Responsibility Shifted to a Child. It looks to me as if the Hindu priests wished to shift the responsibility of the whole fanatical sacrifice to a child. Well, anyway, the sight of the little child with the torch made Miriam's Mir-iam's mother redouble her efforts to stop the whole thing. She switched the conversation to the mystical side of Christianity. She sang hymns translated into the native tongue and the widow showed some signs of losing the effects of the drug. A painted priest appeared in the doorway. His eyes flashed in fanatical anger. "Come, it is time," he said. But the determined American mother drove him away, too. She knew that priests are forbidden the sanctity of the women's quarters. He left muttering threats as she spoke to his victim of the God he hated. The widow was crying quietly now and listening. Meanwhile, Miriam's father was doing his part. He was going from group to group pleading with some threatening others. A few native Christians appeared and helped him. The priests raged but all feared the heavy hand of British law and soon the missionary had his way. The torch was applied to the funeral pyre WITHOUT ITS LIVING VICTIM. Body of Husband Burned Alone. The fire crackled and roared, Miriam says. Scorched human flesh smelt heavy on the oppressive jungle air priests sulked but the body burned alone. It was not until the last ember had fallen and the last tom-tom had ceased its savage strain that her mother and father started back through the jungle over which the first signs of dawn were creeping. The native mother and daughter went with them and cried out their gratitude at every step. They promised to become converts to a faith that could win against the power of the Hindu priests. "But," Mrs. Richardson ends, "the arm of the Hindu priests in that superstition-ridden land, is long. Thwarted once, it clutched at its victims again. The women were spirited away later and when last heard of were living as 'temple women' in the power of the priest whom they feared more than the God of the Christians!" Mrs. Richardson lives in New Jersey now far from the sounds ol the jungle of India but I'll bet she still hears in her sleep the mysterious throbbing of the Hindu tom-toms. Don't you? (Released by Western Newspaper Union.) |