Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/385

 upon the same tree with her brother, fifteen days afterwards.

that interval, the queen and ladies at court employed their utmost interest with the king to pardon Adera, for they looked upon it as a disgraceful thing, both to their sex and quality, that a woman of her family should be thus publicly executed. All the ladies of the court having joined, therefore, in a public petition to the king while on his throne, he is said to have answered them by the following short parable: —

" was once an old woman, who being told of the death of an infant, said, with great indifference. Children are but tender; it is no wonder that they die, for any thing will kill a child. Being told of a youth dying, she observed, Young people are forward and rash; they are always in the way of some disaster; no wonder they die; it is impossible it should be otherwise. But being told an old woman was dead, she began to tear her hair, and lament, crying. Now the world is at an end if old women begin to die, fearing that her turn might be the next. In this manner all of you have seen Tecla Georgis die, and also several of his companions, and you have not said a word. But now it is come to the hanging of one woman, you are all alarmed, and the world is at an end. Do not then deceive yourselves, but be assured that the same cord which tied the feet of Abba Jacob, still remains sufficient to hang that sow Adera, and all those that shall be so wicked as to behave like her, to the disgrace of your sex, and their own rank and quality."