86.

The Women's Christian College, Madras, 1915.

The Vellore Medical School, 1918.

These three names and dates are red-lettered in the history of
international friendship, for through them the college women of America
and India are joined into one fellowship of knowledge and service.

[Illustration: BIOLOGY CLASS AT LUCKNOW COLLEGE
Head of Class Leaning on Table, and Nine Students Dissecting Nine Rabbits]

LUCKNOW

Lal Bagh.

A dusty journey of a night and almost a day brings you from Calcutta
across the limitless Ganges plains to Lucknow, capital of the ancient
kingdom of Oudh. Every tourist visits it, making a pious pilgrimage
first to the Residency, where in the midst of green lawns and banyan
trees the scarred ruins tell of the unforgettable Mutiny days of '57;
and then to the nearby cemetery, where the dead sleep among the
jasmines. Then, if his hours are wisely chosen, the traveler drives back
to the town at sunset when palace towers and cupolas, mosque minarets
and domes are silhouetted against the blazing west in an unrivalled
skyline.

The tourist returns to the bazaars and in the midst of them, amid the
dust and clatter of _ekkas_ and _tongas_, probably passes by a sight
more interesting than Residency ruins and abandoned palaces--inasmuch as
it deals with the living present rather than the dead past. It was in
Lal Bagh, the Ruby Garden of hid treasure, that the Nawab Iq
bal-ud-dowler, Lord Chamberlain to the first king of Oudh, hid,
according to report, great caskets of silver rupees, with a huge ruby
possessed of magic virtues, and left behind him a sheet of detailed
directions for finding the treasure, with, alas, a postscript to explain
that all the careful directions were quite wrong, being intended to
mislead the would-be discoverer. It was again in Lal Bagh that Isabella
Thoburn founded her school for Indian girls, and in 1886 opened the
classes of the first women's college for India to possess residence
accommodation and a staff of women teachers. The buried rupees and the
magic ruby have never been unearthed; instead these years of Lal Bagh
history have witnessed the discovery of richer treasure in the minds and
hearts of young women, set free from age-long repressions and sent out
to share their riches with a world in need.

You enter Lal Bagh's gates and find yourself before a stretch of dull
red buildings whose wide-arched verandahs are built to keep out the
fierce suns of May