"Then she went to other houses and begged the grains of mustard-seed, which they gladly gave her, but to her questionings one said, 'I have lost a son'; another, 'I have lost a parent'; and yet another, 'I have lost a slave'; and every one and all of them made some such reply.
"At last, not being able to discover a single house free from the dead, whence she could obtain the mustard-seed, and feeling utterly faint and weary, she sat herself down upon a stone, with her baby in her lap, and thinking sadly said to herself: 'Alas! this is a heavy task I have undertaken. I am not the only one who has lost her baby. Everywhere children are dying, parents are dying, loved ones are dying, and everywhere they tell me that the dead are more numerous than the living. Shall I then think only of my own sorrow?'
"Thinking thus, she suddenly summoned courage to put away her sorrow for her dead baby, and she carried him to the forest and laid him down to rest under a tree; and having covered him over with tender leaves, and taking her last look of his loved face, she betook herself once more to the Buddha and bowed before him.
"And he said to her: 'Sister, hast thou found the mustard-seed?'
"'I have not, my lord, she replied, 'for the people in the village tell me there is no house in which some one has not died; for the living are few, but the dead are many.'
"'And where is your baby?'
"'I have laid him under a tree in the forest, my lord,' said Keesah, gently.
"Then said the Buddha to her: 'You have found the grains of mustard-seed; you thought that you alone had lost a son, but now you have learned that the law of death and of suffering is among all living creatures, and that here there is no permanence.'
"On hearing this Keesah was comforted, and established in the path of virtue, and was thenceforth called Keesah Godami, the disciple of the Buddha."[46]
The pleasantest of the days that I spent in the city of the "Nang Harm" were those that fell on the first full moons in the months of May, which days are always held as the anniversary of the birth, inspiration, and death of the Buddha. On the morning of the 21st of May, 1864, I was conducted by a number of well-dressed slave-women to the residence of my pupil, the "child wife." Her house was a brick building with a low wall running round it, which took in some few acres of ground devoted to gardens and to residences for her numerous slaves and attendants. I was the first, that morning, to pass between the two brick and mortar lions which guarded the entrance, and after a kindly greeting I took my place at the inner end of the hall or antechamber which gave access to the residence.