on has
trebled with the British occupation; that for every insane person in
India there are thirteen in Europe,--the words "placid East" purveying
the explanation. Taking the country by and large it is claimed that only
one male in ten and only one female out of a hundred and forty-four, can
read and write; and it is said by British residents in the land that the
native knows no such thing as scholarship--he learns everything by rote,
even to the extent of perfect recitation, without comprehending the
meaning of the wards he is uttering. It is the nature of illiterate
Hindus to resort to the extremest extravagance in nearly every
statement, and it is not uncommon for report to have it that an
Englishman has spoken abusively of a hundred thousand good Hindus, when
that individual has merely intimated to a native servant that he would
like his morning meal served with more punctuality. The illiterate
Hindu, it is interesting to know, believes that the human soul passes
through eight million reincarnations. When this child of the East deals
with numbers his tongue runs into meaningless extravagance, and there
appears to be no communion between his intellect and speech.

While marriage is universal in India, if not obligatory, the custom
forbidding the remarriage of widows works an injustice to the sex
amounting to national disgrace. A Hindu maiden who at twelve or thirteen
is unmarried brings social obloquy on her family and entails
retrospective damnation on three generations of ancestors. A Hindu man
must marry and beget children to make certain of his funeral rites, lest
his spirit wander uneasily in the waste places of the earth or be
precipitated into the temporary hell called _Put_. The last available
census discloses the astonishing fact that there are twenty-six million
widows in India, meaning that out of every hundred women at least
fourteen have been bereft of their husbands, and consequently are no
better than human derelicts upon the earth. It is a teaching of the
abominable Hindu faith that the bridegroom cometh but once. A pundit of
the belief will argue that the practical reason for prohibiting
remarriage is to prevent the crowding of the marriage market--and this
is the only "reason" that can be extracted from one claiming to speak
with knowledge on the unfortunate subject. The enlightened Gaekwar of
Baroda, devoting influence and fortune to the moral uplifting of the
people of his land, pronounces the cus