he lower classes the reproach of child-widowhood is not
so strongly felt. It was the sorrows of girls belonging to her own
Brahman caste, married perhaps at the age of eight or ten to husbands
five times their own age, and then made practically outcasts by those
husbands' death, that most touched the heart of Ramabai. It is wonderful
what she has already accomplished. We found on her extensive premises a
great assembly-room which has sheltered at one time twenty-six hundred
auditors; schools of every grade for Hindu girls, including a school for
the blind; a large and commodious hospital; a printing office with
presses capable of turning out a high order of typography; an asylum for
lepers; a rescue-home for unfortunate girls; normal classes for teachers
and for nurses; training in sewing, embroidery, and weaving; and many
another sort of Christian service, including the work of the factory and
the farm. Every species of cooking on the premises, and all the care of
the rooms and houses, is done by the girls themselves, so that all of
them are taught how to support themselves when they leave the
institution. Three hours a day for industrial work, and three hours a
day for schooling, is the uniform rule. One can imagine the far-reaching
influence of this institution, if he remembers that out of the
twenty-four hundred scholars who were received and taught in that
dreadful time of famine, more than fifteen hundred were child-widows and
many of them of the highest caste.

Ramabai is a great scholar. She has translated and printed the whole New
Testament, in the colloquial Mahrati dialect, for the benefit of the
poor women in her district. She is now engaged upon the Psalms and the
book of Genesis, with the hope of finishing the whole Old Testament.
Numberless tracts of her composition have gone out into all parts of
India. Her graduates become not only teachers, but also evangelists. No
one can measure the extent of her present influence, as showing what a
native woman in India can do, in the way of breaking down caste,
overthrowing pernicious customs, and demonstrating to a benighted
heathen world the superior claims of Christian truth. We left Ramabai,
invoking a blessing upon her head and upon Manorama, her daughter, who
bids fair to prove her worthy successor. Ramabai, by her intellectual
gifts, her executive ability, and above all by her Christian devotion,
deserves honor from all lovers of Christ and his gospel.

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