And speaking of the Govenor's wife's scrapbook (first quote above), this paragraph from chapter three is part of the hard work I was talking about
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Quote:
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The Governor’s wife’s scrapbook is kept on the round table with the silk shawl covering it, branches like vines intertwined, with flowers and red fruit and blue birds, it is really one large tree and if you stare at it long enough the vines begin to twist as if a wind is blowing them. It was sent from India by her eldest daughter who is married to a missionary, which is not a thing I would care to do myself. You would be sure to die early, if not from the rioting natives as at Cawnpore with horrid outrages committed on the persons of respectable gentlewomen, and a mercy they were all slaughtered and put out of their misery, for only think of the shame; then from the malaria, which turns you entirely yellow, and you expire in raving fits; in any case before you could turn around, there you would be, buried under a palm tree in a foreign clime. I have seen pictures of them in the book of Eastern engravings the Governor’s wife takes out when she wishes to shed a tear.
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Anyone want to take a stab at decoding the first two sentences? The branch and tree descriptions relate to what exactly? Is the silk covering the table or the scrapbook? What was sent from India?
Such disjointed thoughts were intentional, I assume, but they do not make for easy reading.