my! There, dishonesty and petty larceny are foibles too
frequently condoned because too generally practiced. Even among the higher
classes--the cultured and elite--open-faced and open-handed frankness and
sincerity are too rare. Hypocrisy and duplicity are too often cultivated
as a fine art. It seems to be the pride and pleasure of an Oriental to
conceal his mind and purpose and to say and do things by the greatest
indirection possible.

India has been extolled as a land where there is no profanity. This is
true and she should have the credit for this abstinence. And one never
feels like giving her this credit more than when he returns from that
country to this and is compelled to endure the coarse profanity which
pervades our streets as a terrible stench.

Yet one can hardly see how the Hindu could find interest in, and a strong
grip upon, profanity, so long as the gods of his pantheon have so little
of his respect and enter so rarely into the serious compacts of his life.
Moreover it should not be forgotten that obscenity fulfills in India the
function of profanity in the West. The bursts of passion which find
expression here through taking the name of God in vain gain utterance
there in language unspeakably bad of the other kind. And this is only a
part of the larger subject of the prevalence of social immorality in
India--an evil which is largely fostered under the protection of the
religion of the land. When Lord Dalhousie, the Viceroy of India, was
considering an act for the suppression of obscenity in the country, he was
compelled by Hindu sentiment to exempt all temples and religious emblems
from the operation of the act! What better commentary could one desire
upon the source and prevalence of this vice in that land? When such an
evil is intrenched behind the religion of the people and is symbolized and
fostered by its emblems and ceremonies--when _tasies_, or women dedicated
to the Hindu gods and temple worship (there are 12,000 of these in South
India alone), constitute the public characters of the land--then the hope
for the purification of life is at the lowest ebb.

It is also very rare that one finds a Hindu whose convictions and loyalty
to certain beliefs are such that he is willing to suffer in their behalf.
That masculine vigour and manly persistence under difficulty in
maintaining what he believes to be right and true is not germane to the
Hindu character.

On the other hand, the Hindu is strong in