Other facts were added from time to time during
several years of frequent association with these singular people, in
whose glorious though unsuccessful struggles for home and liberty it
is impossible not to feel an interest.
As a race, the Parsees are intelligent, active and energetic. With
business capacities far above the average, they are usually successful
in amassing wealth, while they are extremely benevolent in dispensing
their gains for both public and private charities. For private
benefactions they have, however, little call among themselves, since a
Parsee pauper would be an unheard-of anomaly. Their style of living is
princely but peculiar. In the reception-rooms of the wealthy--and most
of the Parsees in the city of Bombay are wealthy--one finds a
rather quaint mingling of Oriental luxury and European
elegance--brightly-tinted Persian carpets placed in Eastern fashion
over divans strewn with embroidered cushions and jewel-studded
pillows, among which recline, with genuine Oriental indolence, some of
the members of the family; while in another part of the same room
half a dozen more may be grouped about a table of marble and rosewood,
occupying velvet chairs that have traveled unmistakably from London
or Paris. French mirrors and Italian statuettes may have for their
_vis-a-vis_ the exquisite mosaics, the massive gold vases and the
costly bijouterie of the Orient, strewn so profusely around as to
startle unaccustomed eyes; and a genuine Meissonier will be just as
likely to be placed side by side with a Persian houri as anywhere
else.
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