remely contented with the
narrow sphere which man has grudgingly given her. And, for this very
reason, she combats every endeavour, on the part of her friends, to
release her from her bondage and to increase her opportunities and
blessings in life. The old triple slander perpetrated upon India, to the
effect that "it is a country in which the women never laugh, the birds
never sing and the flowers have no fragrance," is a falsehood in all its
details. Hindu women have as merry a laugh as their sisters in any other
land. They have learned to make the best of their lot and to rejoice in
it.

Since the time of the Mohammedan conquest, and probably long before, the
higher class of women have mostly led a life of seclusion. This is
preeminently true of the northern parts of the country where Mohammedan
influence was strongest and the Hindu had carefully to protect his wife
and daughters from the coarse Mussulman. In South India this seclusion is
very rare and observed only among the most aristocratic. The common woman
of India finds ample freedom of intercourse in her town and village, and
figures conspicuously at the great religious festivals of her land.

Generally speaking, woman is the redeeming feature of India. She is the
ideal home-keeper and housekeeper. Usually, she is devoted to her husband,
a passionate lover of her children, the conserver of society, the true
devotee in religion. Her lord and husband has been taught, from time
immemorial, to keep her in obscurity and to surround her with the screen
of ignorance and narrow sympathies; but she has magnified the work
assigned to her; her excellence has shown far beyond his; and, in her
bondage, she has built her throne from which she has wielded her sceptre
of love and goodness over him.

She has never aspired to realms not granted to her by her lawgivers. The
modern aspiration of the "new woman" of the West does not appeal to her.
She asks only to be let alone in her narrow but, to her, all-sufficient
sphere.

2. But, after all we have said, or can say, of the power of woman in
India, it still remains that, in no other land, has she suffered such
marked disability and deeper injustice. If her goodness has shone out of
her darkness, it has only served to reveal the more the sadness of her
position. She bears in her condition the signs of her bondage and
humiliation. The evils of the land have been attributed to her; and man
too often ascribes his own degradation