on more than for anything else. There is one important exception,
they all love Shakespeare and there is no one whom they so delight to
act. Whenever they invite us to an entertainment, which they do on many
and various occasions, we are fairly sure of seeing a few scenes of
Shakespeare acted much better than I have ever seen English girls of
their age act.

The students have been collecting a fund for our new Science building, a
great and beautiful enterprise, which, also, is still in its proper
stage. The drawing of plans so large and detailed has occupied many
months. We are looking to America for the generous gift which shall
bring these plans into actuality, but help from other sources is
welcome, too, and particularly help from the students. They have made
many efforts and reached a sum of more than Rs. 500. Their most
important undertaking was a performance of "Everyman" most solemnly and
beautifully carried out before an audience of our women friends, and
there was also a dramatic version written by one of the students of the
parable of the prodigal son and performed before the college only. This
last was remarkable in its adaptation of the story to Indian conditions
and for the characteristic introduction of a mother and a sister.

[Illustration: THE OLD INDIA
No Chance--No Hope]

"If she have sent her servants in our pain,
If she have fought with Death and dulled his sword,
If she have given back our sick again
And to the breast the weakling lips restored,
Is it a little thing that she has wrought?
Then Life and Death and Motherhood be nought."

_Kipling's "Song of the Women"_

The Medical School at Vellore is still without a permanent home and is
lodged in scattered buildings--without a permanent staff except for two
or three heroic figures who are performing each the work of
several--without a certainty of a regular income in any way equivalent
to its needs--but it has an enthusiastic band of students and it has Dr.
Ida Scudder, and so the balance is on the right side.

[Footnote *: Opposing the study of the Bible in our schools.]

CHAPTER FIVE

SENT FORTH TO HEAL

"THE Long Trail A-Winding."

Who that has read "Kim" will ever forget Kipling's picture of the Grand
Trunk Road, with its endless panorama of beggars, Brahmans, Lamas, and
talkative old women on pilgrimage? Such roads cover India's plains with
a network of interlacing lines, for one of