History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

CHAP. VI.] THE PRINCE OF WALES IN INDIA. 287

In the evening many Parsis gave large dinnerparties, at which toasts to the health of His Royal Highness were drunk with great enthusiasm.

His Royal Highness’s illness and restoration to health by the kindness of benign Providence were yet fresh in the minds of the natives of India when four years later His Royal Highness landed on their soil. The joy of the Parsis—men, women, and children—at beholding the very prince for whose recovery they had so earnestly and fervently sent up their prayers to Heaven, was unbounded, and it could and did not escape the observation of His Royal Highness himself and of the members of his suite. Every man, woman, and child, came out to behold the face of their beloved Sovereign’s son, their future King and Emperor, and to offer him a hearty welcome. On another occasion, when a miscreant fired at the Queen, the Parsi community offered up special prayers of thanksgiving for Her Majesty’s providential escape.

It was a subject of particular pride and gratification to the Parsis that the first to express words of welcome to His Royal Highness on behalf of the inhabitants of the city of Bombay was one of their own race. The author has studiously refrained from mentioning himself in various connections in the preceding pages, but in this one instance he hopes to be pardoned for stating that that most loyal, pleasant, and honourable duty devolved upon him as Chairman