een a day pupil in a mission school for four years. She
could read and write well, and sew, and do fancy work. Her father was
dead, her brother, for some business expedient, arranged a marriage for
her, when she was thirteen, with an old man who had already sons and
daughters much older than herself.

He was a head man in his village and lived some distance from Fatimah's
home. "Do you think it will be a good thing for Fatimah?" said I to the
mother. "What are we to do?" was the reply; "they say he is kind; and
far better to marry her to him than to a young man who will only
ill-treat and beat her; we are very poor and cannot afford to get a
really respectable young man."

The marriage took place, within two months Fatimah had returned home but
was induced to go back again, this was repeated twice and on returning
home the third time, she made up her mind to get her husband to
permanently divorce her. Her mother of course abetted her, and a woman
(as payment for a piece of fancy work she had asked Fatimah to do for
her) promised to bring about the divorce by some plan of intrigue which
she would arrange.

Fatimah's life is blighted; the best that one can hope for is
re-marriage to a poor but respectable man, and to go through her life
with him; but the probabilities are she will be married and divorced
time after time, and each time sink lower in the social scale. She is
not yet fifteen years old.

Aneesah was a little girl of nine, frail and delicate-looking, and an
only child and much petted, but often she seemed possessed by the devil
so naughty was her conduct. At such times her mother would take her and
tie her up, then beat her unmercifully, until the neighbors, hearing the
child's screams, would come to the rescue and force the mother to
desist. The mother has herself shown me the marks of her own teeth in
the flesh of her child's arms, where she has bitten her in order to
drive the devil out of her. What is likely to be the future of that
child? One shudders to think of it.

Many a time in visiting among the very poor I have sat with the women in
an open court, which is like a small yard in the middle of several
houses, in which several families own one, two, or three rooms. In the
court there may be a dozen or more women, unwashed, uncombed, untidy to
a degree; some bread-making, some washing, others seated nursing their
babies:--babies who are as sick and unhealthy as they can possibly be,
their bodies i