purged of its defilements. The result of
which is, that her poetic mind has had to waste itself upon such
themes as nightfall at Hyderabad, or the alabaster box in which she
treasures her spices, or the bride weeping because her lord is dead.

It is no exaggeration to say that a really happy-looking Hindu is a
rare sight, even when on pleasure bent. Childhood in the Hindu world
has its flashes of fun, but except in the passing excitement of some
romping game, the faces of the children are usually as dull as those
of their elders. Two Hindu boys were looking at the picture in the
story-book of "Jerome, the Brahmin boy," in which the photographs
taken on his first arrival is reproduced, showing his Hindu pigtail,
and the paint marks on his forehead, and his sacred thread. Contrasted
with this is the photograph taken soon after his baptism. I do not
suppose that the boys understood the full significance of the
pictures, and this made the comment of one of them the more valuable.
"There is a great difference," he said, "between these two pictures.
In the first the boy has a very bad face. But in the other picture it
is very good." An English boy, writing in a letter on the subject of
the same picture, says of Jerome as a Christian, "He looks twice as
happy as when he was a heathen."

CHAPTER XVII

HINDUS AND RELIGION

Irreverence in Hindu temples. Robbing the god. Burial of
gods. Justice in native states. Giving the title of "god" to
people. The god's relations. Hindu conception of god; of
prayer. Nominal Hindus. The old army pensioner. The "thread"
ceremony.

Whatever the Hindu conception of a god may be, their behaviour in
their temples shows that it is something entirely different to the
ideas which a Christian associates with the name of God. The greatest
irreverence, from our point of view of what irreverence means, is
continually going on in a Hindu temple in the presence of the idol, to
which homage is done as to a god, and which is the object of a good
deal of ceremonial attention from the person whose business it is to
pay it. Talking loudly, and laughing and joking, children romping
about; all this is evidently not felt to be out of place in the
temple, because it goes on habitually, and apparently unrebuked.
Card-playing is constantly carried on in those larger temples in which
there is a space in front of the idol, and evidently nobody objects.
Indians are great card-play