Page:Sixteen years of an artist's life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands.djvu/82

Rh most matter-of-fact and serious countenance in the world, is informing the defunct of all the gossip of Tangier during the past week, of all the scandal and slander that have been circulating there from mouth to mouth, and of all th domestic annals, the quarrels, the reconciliations, the jealousies, and the envies that the most untiring zeal could treasure up in the interchange of such agreeable small-talk. Such is the strange motley in which human life here, as everywhere else, invests itself.

But if I felt inclined to indulge in a series of the usual moral reflections after witnessing so unusual a spectacle, I was not allowed to lengthen them out to any immoderate extent. I was suddenly interrupted by the approach of a funeral procession, the vicinity of which was announced by the monotonous chant of the mourners, and by the hurried, heavy sound of many feet. The corpse, muffled in a Haikh, was borne along in a rough trough, carried on the shoulders of four men, who at every few paces were relieved by others, anxious to obtain the promised blessing of the Prophet, and to expedite the arrival of the deceased at his newly-dug grave, where the angel of death is believed to be waiting for him, in order that his examination may be begun, and the judgement