When he
had recovered himself a little from this risible convulsion he observed
that his father and his grandfather had cut down cocoa-nut trees in
considerable numbers without the slightest remorse or fear. And yet
again, I afterwards heard that one of the richest Hindu families in
Calcutta, rather than suffer so sacred an object to be injured, piously
submit to a very serious inconvenience occasioned by a cocoa-nut tree
standing in the centre of the carriage road that leads to the portico of
their large town palace. I am told that there are other sacred trees
which must not be removed by the hands of Hindus of inferior caste,
though in this case there is a way of getting over the difficulty, for
it is allowable or even meritorious to make presents of these trees to
Brahmins, who cut them down for their own fire-wood. But the cocoa-nut
tree is said to be too sacred even for the axe of a Brahmin.
I have been running away again from my subject;--I was discoursing upon
May-day in England. The season there is still a lovely and a merry one,
though the most picturesque and romantic of its ancient observances, now
live but in the memory of the "oldest inhabitants," or on the page of
history.[055]
See where, amidst the sun and showers,
The Lady of the vernal hours,
Sweet May, comes forth again with all her flowers.
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