that his police or his judiciary is less efficient than ours! Surely, most surely, we are being punished for our transgressions, punished to be schooled into a better life, but to be schooled only if we will learn. Every child-widow in India means a crime against Nature, a sin against God. Every consummation during pubescence, every marriage entailing such consummation, means the curses of the children to be born, a failure of our duty to our past, to our present, and to our future! Do you think that such failure of duty is a thing not to be ashamed of? Is it not equivalent to moral insolvency? And is such insolvency less disgraceful than pecuniary insolvency? Far be it from me to say that we are all moral insolvents. But so long as we choose to turn a deaf ear to the reproofs of our own back-slidings, so long as we do not break the yoke and burst the bands of the evil customs which hold us in thrall, so long as we strike no blow for our own freedom from their tyranny, we deserve no better fate than that of moral insolvents and parasites and slaves.

A HINDU ANTIQUARY.-And no better Yuga than the Kali Yuga-the Yuga of Kalhi-the Age of Misery. Read, my friends, the sixty-fourth Adhiaya of the Adiparva of the Mahabharata, and you find that in the Satya Yuga, men knew not women before their full prime, that children never died in infancy, that sterility was the lot of none, that disease was unknown, that woman was not a

"Poor thing of usages! coerced-compelled,

Victim when wrong, and martyr oft when right,' that health and holiness went hand in hand, and vigour and virtue were inseparable companions. We have long divorced them by this brutish and foolish usage of premature marriage and the demoralisation it has entailed, and I propose that we solemnly swear, each of us, to rest not and to pause not until we succeed in bringing the old Satya Yuga back again, at least in this essential respect,

A HINDU ANTI-REFORMER.-And pray how are you going to bring it back, dear old man? Are you going to apply to the prosaic British Government for this boon?

A HINDU ANTIQUARY.-I mean to try my own people first, and when I despair of them it will be time to apply to the Government.

A HINDU LAWYER.-But how are you going to try your own people first?

A HINDU ANTIQUARY.-Well, I will join my friend, the missionary here, and implore each caste to reform itself. I will entreat my educated brethren to become missionaries like us, and shame them into establishing at least one indigenous mission which may compare favourably with the 800 foreign missions we have amongst us. I will ask the public to support it at least as well as the Countess of Dufferin Fund, for the object of the fund is curative while ours is preventive. I will devote the remaining few years of my life to this work, for I feel that not a single earnest word, not a single honest effort, is ever wasted. My God, my Father, will bless my poor endeavours, and enable me to sow at least a seed which may one day germinate and grow into a goodly tree. This is my simple old-fashioned faith, and I mean to act up to it.

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial;

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives

Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." M. G. RANADE.—I wish every one of us had your faith and every one of us acted up to it.

A HINDU LAWYER.-It is not difficult to act up to it, if one can only understand that the best selfishness lies in un

selfishness. I am afraid I can't become a missionary, but though I can't spare my time, the mission is welcome to

my money.

AN ANTI-REFORMER.-But I don't yet understand what this new-fangled mission is wanted for.

A HINDU ANTIQUARY.-Well, if you can't understand that self-help is essential to our progress, that progress is necessary for perfection, that perfection should be the aim of every human being; if you can't conceive any higher ideal than that of personal happiness, you can at least understand the great disparity which premature marriage is creating between the two sexes. It has been well said that this practice "shortens the period of pure and joyous maidenhood," and that "the child is thereby forced by an abrupt and violent transition into the woman. It is only the joylessness of a people, that could have made the Nautch a pleasurable mode' of passing an evening. This result is a direct consequence of India having withdrawn, from the commerce of society, the element which Nature has provided to brighten, purify, and elevate it; and Nature, indignant at the affront, has retaliated by the infliction of the Nautch as the great national amusement." The Greeks had their hetære, and we have our Naikins, and the origin of the latter is the same as that of the former. Is it, I ask, conducive to happiness, for the husband to be well educated, and the wife to be ill-educated or not educated at all? Then is it conducive to happiness or even to sensual gratification, to mate an unripe girl to an unripe boy? We are in this respect more kind to our mares and horses, our cows and oxen, than to our own kin, our own sons and daughters. Again, is it conducive to happiness, to have a feeble or unhealthy family? Lastly, if intellectual pleasures are superior to physical pleasures, and if such pleasures are desirable, do you expect that so long as this barbarous custom overshadows our life, we can ever have good poetry or excel in art? Read the

sorry stuff turned out every year, and then say if chivalry is not its own reward. Read any of our modern dramas or novels, and you will find them uninteresting, unless they deal with our past, or borrow from European sources. A Gujarati graduate and poet has tried recently to depict modern Hindu home-life, as attractively as possible. But all the attractions arise from what modern Hindu life sadly lacks. Even the name of his heroine-Kumudsundari-has a classical turn. She is certainly a loveable ideal, but no reality. Where is the Hinduani, wise and pure, who can quote Sakuntala and the Merchant of Venice, play on the sitar and the sarangi, and sing divinely? Every educated Hindu would like to have such a Kumud-such a lotos-lovely maiden-for his wife. But where are these "phantoms of delight" in Hindu society? They exist in the brains of those who have read Kalidas and Shakespeare, but otherwise we know them not. And yet, alas! there was a time when they were not unknown, when they adorned Aryan homes, and inspired the highest poetry and the highest art. But now, truly, the age of Aryan chivalry is gone! That of canting sophists, and heartless calculators, has succeeded! Our true seers are dead; our blind guides of the blind remain !

"The seer from the East was then in light.

The seer from the West was then in shade.

Ah! now 'tis changed. In conquering sunshine bright

The man of the bold West now comes arrayed.

He of the mystic East is touch'd with night."

SIR T. MADAVA Row.-Let us hope, however, that a brighter day is in store for us. There is no community which suffers more from self-inflicted, or self-accepted, or self-created and therefore avoidable, evils, than ours. Let us hold provincial conferences, and caste conferences, and send dele

gates annually to the Central Social Conference, to keep alive a constant agitation against social abuses. Let us employ our own missionaries, to create public opinion in favour of social reform, and let us all band ourselves like brothers, and work together in harmony, and shrink from no self-sacrifice until our end is achieved. Let us, my brethren, deserve success, and then, under God's providence, we are not likely to be baulked of it.

A HINDU LAWYER.-Yes, let us put forth our best energies and have an effective organisation. We must tackle the castes in right earnest, and induce those, which are ahead of the rest, to form themselves into registered associations, so as to be able to enforce their penalties for violated pledges through a court of law. We should move the Legislature to amend that disgraceful provision regarding the age of consent in cases of rape. We should keep a watchful eye on our judge-made law, and spare no efforts to protect the rights. of helpless women.

DEWAN BAHADUR RAGHUNATH ROW.-And what is to become of the child-widow? Is nothing to be done for her immediately? Do you not know, gentlemen, what a life she leads in our parts-privation of food, of clothing, and of even necessary comforts, observance of fasts which at times extend to 72 hours, enforced absence from every scene of festivity; the enduring of execrations heaped upon her if she unwittingly or unfortunately comes in front of a man, a priest, or a bride; these, I say, become the daily experiences of her life. I say you must agitate for the re-marriage with full Vedic rites of such widows at least. I have watched your discussion in silence, but I can't let it close without putting in a word for the child-widow.

A HINDU ANTIQUARY.-Become a missionary like me, my friend, and devote yourself to her cause, and you will not fail.