What would be your choice if you had to choose between being blind
and being deaf?
Nine people out of ten answer this question by
positively preferring deafness to blindness. And one whose good
fortune it has been to contemplate, even for a moment, some fantastic
fairy-like corner of India, this country of lace-like marble palaces
and enchanting gardens, would willingly add to deafness, lameness
of both legs, rather than lose such sights.
We are told that Saadi, the great poet, bitterly complained of his
friends looking tired and indifferent while he praised the beauty
and charm of his lady-love. "If the happiness of contemplating
her wonderful beauty," remonstrated he, "was yours, as it is mine,
you could not fail to understand my verses, which, alas, describe
in such meagre and inadequate terms the rapturous feelings
experienced by every one who sees her even from a distance!"
I fully sympathize with the enamoured poet, but cannot condemn
his friends who never saw his lady-love, and that is why I tremble
lest my constant rhapsodies on India should bore my readers as much
as Saadi bored his friends. But what, I pray you, is the poor
narrator to do, when new, undreamed-of charms are daily discovered
in the lady-love in question? Her darkest aspects, abject and
immoral as they are, and sometimes of such a nature as to excite
your horror - even these aspects are full of some wild poetry, of
originality, which cannot be met with in any other country.
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