Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 145, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1917 — Great Lesson Is Taught by Old Legend of the Hindus [ARTICLE]

Great Lesson Is Taught by Old Legend of the Hindus

The familiar mustard has a moral tale told in its connection by the Hindus, a story whose moral is as pungent as the flavor of the plant. A mother, the legend runs, had lost her only child, and, distracted, she carried the little body from door to door, from temple to temple, crying out to priest and doctor, to wise man and scholar, “Oh, master, what can I do to save my child?” Everywhere she was greeted by pity, but no help came until one old sage answered, “One thing will bring him back ’to you, and one only—a handful of mustard seed from a house in which no child or loved one lias ever died.” With hope she hurried out on her quest, but everywhere as she put the question, “Has any loved one died in this house?” the Inmates would answer, “Of a surety, for countless are the hosts of the dead, and never was there one so desolate as to leave none to mourn the passing.” And as she went the lesson sank into her heart that her loss had but joined her soul to the universal soul of humanity; that there was none in all the wide world to whom sorrow was unknown, and, going hack to the wise man, she laid her little dead child at his feet, crying out: “I have learned my lesson. Mine is but the common lot, for death is the end of all.”