The Gordon College, where the boys of the Soudan are taught all that English schoolboys learn, is the monument that England gave to a hero. A statue of him stands in one of the squares, and to it came a poor old black woman to whom Gordon had been very kind.
"God be praised!" she cried, "Gordon Pasha has come again!"
For a whole day she sat beside the statue, longing for a look from him who had never before passed her without a friendly nod.
"Is he tired? or what is it?" she asked.
After many visits, she came home one evening quite happy.
"The Pasha has nodded his head to me!" she said.
And so, in the hearts of the people of the Soudan, Gordon Pasha still lives.
Winds carry across the desert the scent of the roses that he planted, and that drop their fragrant leaves near where his blood was shed.
And to the Eastern country for whose sake he died, and to our own land for whose honour his life was given, he has left a memory that must be like the roses—for ever fragrant, and for ever sweet.
[1] Strand Magazine, May 1892. By kind permission of Messrs. Newnes.