Pandurang Hari; Or, Memoirs of a Hindoo (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PANDURANG HARl CHAPTER I. [ITHERTO it has been customary with those who write a history of their lives and adventures, to commence with a minute detail of all the circumstances connected with their earliest years?their family, birth, and education. I would most willingly follow preceding examples in this respect, had my history resembled that of other men; but, unfortunately, I was a long period of my life in utter ignorance to whom I was under obligations for my introduction into the world; so that any information I may subsequently have acquired respecting my parentage, can hardly be said to belong to the first part of my history, as it would clearly do to that of the generality of mankind. This singularity, therefore, in the very outset of my existence, and the wish I have to adhere as closely as possible to the regular order of events, must be my apology to the reader for my not saying anything here upon these points, or even hinting just now who I discovered my parents to be; I shall only thereby keep the public in the dark for a time on this subject, as I was once kept myself. Should any part of it betray an impatient curiosity as to these matters after I have begun, I must entreat it to keep my example in view, and practise a little Hindoo patience, trusting to my promise of disclosing these important secrets in due time and place. My earliest sense of existence, as well as I can remember, wasseverely painful. I have a clear recollection of an Hindoo, advanced in years, stooping down and extricating me from the hoofs of a troop of bullocks and horses, where I had been left by some one who evidently made my safety a matter of small account. One of the animals, beneath which I was wallowing, had crushed my tender arm with its hoof, and set me, naturally enough, screa...