des but a few hours
since. Long after they are gone, careless and happy, recollections of
the sweet past rise up and smite those who remain: the flowers they had
planted in their little gardens, the toys they played with, the little
vacant cribs they slept in as fathers' eyes looked blessings down on
them. Most of us who have passed a couple of score of years in the
world, have had such sights as these to move us. And those who have will
think none the worse of my worthy Colonel for his tender and faithful
heart.

With that fidelity which was an instinct of his nature, this brave man
thought ever of his absent child, and longed after him. He never forsook
the native servants and nurses who had had charge of the child, but
endowed them with money sufficient (and indeed little was wanted by
people of that frugal race) to make all their future lives comfortable.
No friends went to Europe, nor ship departed, but Newcome sent presents
and remembrances to the boy, and costly tokens of his love and thanks
to all who were kind to his son. What a strange pathos seems to me to
accompany all our Indian story! Besides that official history which
fills Gazettes, and embroiders banners with names of victory; which
gives moralists and enemies cause to cry out at English rapine; and
enables patriots to boast of invincible British valour--besides the
splendour and conquest, the wealth and glory, the crowned ambition, the
conquered danger, the vast prize, and the blood freely shed in winning
it--should not one remember the tears, too? Besides the lives of myriads
of British men, conquering on a hundred fields, from Plassey to Meanee,
and bathing them cruore nostro: think of the women, and the tribute
which they perforce must pay to those victorious achievements. Scarce a
soldier goes to yonder shores but leaves a home and grief in it behind
him. The lords of the subject province find wives there; but their
children cannot live on the soil. The parents bring their children to
the shore, and part from them. The family must be broken up--keep the
flowers of your home beyond a certain time, and the sickening buds
wither and die. In America it is from the breast of a poor slave that a
child is taken. In India it is from the wife, and from under the palace,
of a splendid proconsul.

The experience of this grief made Newcome's naturally kind heart only
the more tender, and hence he had a weakness for children which made him
the laughing-stock