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You are a mile away from the city which lies ahead at your left; the Jumma is flowing just at the farther side of this building, a beautiful blossom in marble and precious stones. All that ornamentation which you see means months and years of patient labor, carving the marble into patterns as perfect as those of rare old lace and embroidery, and setting in bits of semi-precious stones as a jeweler might set them in a casket for a lady's dressing table. The whole structure is as perfect in detail as if it were a toy and yet, as you see, it is really a building of noble proportions. It stands one hundred and eighty-six feet in diameter, and the slender minarets at the four corners of the platform are each one hundred and thirty-three feet high. 

It is a memorial of an Oriental love-story. Just about three hundred years ago (1615) Shah Jehan, the Mogul emperor of India, married a beautiful Persian princess; he called her Mumtaz Mahal, "the Chosen of the palace". Shah Jehan was immensely powerful. His will could end the life of any subject at any instant. But, after fourteen happy years with his Persian queen, Death called her, and not even a Mogul emperor could dispute that claim; she died leaving her royal husband broken-hearted with loneliness. The dearest and loveliest of women should have the most beautiful tomb on earth- that was the one consoling thought left to Shah Jehan. For seventeen years he kept the cleverest workmen in all India busy creating this flower-like building. Then more troubles came. He was deposed by his own son and kept for seven years a prisoner over in the city-his one sad pleasure all those years was looking off down the river to this white bubble of a dome. Today his dust lies beside hers under the marbles.

From Descriptive Bulletin No.2, copyrighted, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.

A Marvel of Beauty, the Jaj Mahal, Agra, India.

Une merveille de beauté, le Taj Mahal, Agra, Inde.

Ein Bunder der  Gconheit, Taj Mahal, au Agra, India.

Una maravillosa beldad, el Taj Mahal, Agra, India.

Ett under af skonhet,Taj Mahal, Agra,Indian.

чудо красоты; тажъ магаль, Aгра, Iндiя.

Transcription Notes:
Needs to transcript the last line and add diacritical mark on the next to last line--skonhet