AND MORDECAI. 
107 
maidens, will fast likewise. And so will I go in unto the king, 
which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.” 
I accompanied the priest through the town, over much ruin 
and rubbish, to an enclosed piece of ground, rather more elevated 
than any in its immediate vicinity. In the center was the Jewish 
tomb ; a square building of brick, of a mosque-like form, with a 
rather elongated dome at the top. The whole seems in a very 
decaying state; falling fast to the mouldered condition of some 
wall-fragments around, which, in former times, had been con¬ 
nected with, and extended the consequencce of the sacred en¬ 
closure. The door that admitted us into the tomb, is in the 
ancient sepulchral fashion of the country, very small; consisting 
of a single stone of great thickness, and turning on its own pivots 
from one side. Its key is always in possession of the head of 
the Jews, resident at Hamadan ; and, doubtless, has been so 
preserved, from the time of the holy pair’s interment, when the 
grateful sons of the captivity, whose lives they had rescued from 
universal massacre, first erected a monument over the remains 
of their benefactors, and obeyed the ordinance of gratitude in 
making the anniversary of their preservation, a lasting memorial 
of Heaven’s mercy, and the just faith of Esther and Mordecai. 
“ So God remembered his people, (saving them from the 
conspiracy of Hainan,) and justified his inheritance. Therefore 
those days shall be unto them, in the month Adar, the four¬ 
teenth and fifteenth day of the same month, wifh an assembly, 
and joy, and with gladness before God, according to the gene¬ 
rations for ever among his people.”—A. Book of Esther, chap. x. 
ver. 12, 13. 
The pilgrimage yet kept up, is a continuation of this appointed 
“ assembling.” And thus, having existed from the time of the 
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