hange, and you invite confusion and much unpleasantness.
Also by changing you express your ignorance and pride. Why should the
child presume to greater wisdom than its father? And now listen to me!
I will show you the matter from our side!" ("Yes, venerable mother,
continue!" interposed the crowd encouragingly.) "You seem to feel it a
sad thing that little Sellamal should be trained as we are training her.
You seem to feel it wrong, and almost, perhaps, disgrace. But if you
could see my eldest daughter the centre of a thousand Brahmans and
high-caste Hindus! If you could see every eye in that ring fixed upon
her, upon her alone! If you could see the absorption--hardly do they
dare to breathe lest they should miss a point of her beauty! Ah, you
would know, could you see it all, upon whose side the glory lies and
upon whose the shame! Compare that moment of exaltation with the
grovelling life of your Christians! Low-minded, flesh-devouring,
Christians, discerning not the difference between clean and unclean!
Bah! And you would have my little Sellamal leave all this for that!"

"But afterwards? What comes afterwards?"

"What know I? What care I? That is a matter for the gods."

The child Sellamal listened to this, glancing from face to face with
wistful, wondering eyes; and as I looked down upon her she looked up at
me, and I looked deep into those eyes--such innocent eyes. Then
something seemed to move the child, and she held up her face for a kiss.

This is only one Temple town. There are many such in the South. These
things are not easy to look at for long. We turn away with burning eyes,
and only for the children's sake could we ever look again. For their
sake look again.

It was early evening in a home of rest on the hills. A medical
missionary, a woman of wide experience, was talking to a younger woman
about the Temple children. She had lived for some time, unknowingly,
next door to a Temple house in an Indian city. Night after night she
said she was wakened by the cries of children--frightened cries,
indignant cries, sometimes sharp cries as of pain. She inquired in the
morning, but was always told the children had been punished for some
naughtiness. "They were only being beaten." She was not satisfied, and
tried to find out more through the police. But she feared the police
were bribed to tell nothing, for she found out nothing through them.
Later, by means of her medical work, she came full upon the truth. . .