Instructive Rambles in London and the Adjacent Villages; Designed to Amuse the Mind, and Improve the Understanding of Youth (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1825. Excerpt: ... CHAP. XXV. CONCLUSION OF THE ADVENTURES OF MR. Wll LIAMS THE SURGEON, AND THE RAJAH ALI SAAB. On the ensuing evening Mr. Williams continued his story. "You will excuse me," said he, "from entering minutely into a detail of the.excellent Selima's death: let it suffice to inform you that it was so exemplary, that even her Pagan attendants could not avoid observing it. 'What unseen Power, ' said they, 'sustains the spirits of this Christian woman? Surely there is no more in her faith than we have been taught to believe.' "I am grieved to pursue a melancholy detail; for the remembrance of lost friends, though we believe them placed at the summit of happiness, calls forth all our sensibility. The good Rajah survived his gentle partner but a few months; and though I tried the whole power of medicine, all was vain.--Ali lost a father, myself a respected friend, whose loss I must ever deplore. Before his death, calling me to his side, he said, 'Williams, as fire trieth iron, so doth calamity prove friendship. Thine has passed the fiery ordeal; and though thou hast relinquished thy country for me, yet I would fain request a farther sacrifice. My son is now in the most dangerous era of his life--he is twenty-one; he will have power to command even his most improper wishes. Stay, therefore, with him, four years. He loves without fearing thee; and the voice of friendship may restrain him from evil when other means might fail: though I trust in that Power which my Selima taught me to believe in, that he will continue virtuous; yet thy presence will remind him of past events, and thy advice strengthen his youthful mind against the temptations of luxury and pleasure.'-"Though I was anxious to revisit my native land, and seek my brother, yet this respectable family for a ...