as in the civic and political life of their country, the Bengalees
have played a leading part, not restricted even to their own province,
and in the very distinguished person of Lord Sinha, Bengal has just
provided for the first time an Indian to represent the King-Emperor as
governor of a province--the neighbouring province of Behar and Orissa.
Nor have the women of Bengal been left behind as in so many other parts
of India. In Calcutta many highly educated ladies have won such complete
release from the ancient restraints imposed upon their sex that they
preside to-day over refined and cultured homes from which the subtle
atmosphere of the East does not exclude the ease and freedom of Western
habits of mind and body.

Yet these are still exceptions, and even in such a progressive city as
Calcutta and even amongst the highest classes the social and domestic
life of the majority of Hindus is still largely governed by the laws of
Hinduism, and not least with regard to marriage and the seclusion of
women. I was once allowed to attend a sort of "scripture lesson" for
little high-caste Hindu girls, organised by a benevolent old Brahman
lady, who has devoted herself to the cause of infant education on
orthodox lines. None of these 40 or 50 little girls had of course
reached the age, usually ten, at which they would be cut off from all
contact with the other sex except in marriage. They had bright and happy
faces, and as it was a Hindu festival most of them were decked out in
all their finery with gold and silver bangles on their dainty arms and
ankles, sometimes with jewelled nose-rings as well as ear-rings. They
went through an elaborate and picturesque ritual with great earnestness
and reverence and carefully followed the injunctions of the Brahman, a
cultured and Western-educated gentleman who presided over the ceremony.
It was an attractive scene, and would have been entirely pleasant but
for the painful contrast afforded by some eight or ten poor little mites
with shaven heads and drab-coloured dresses, almost ragged and quite
unadorned. They were infant widows, condemned according to the laws of
Hinduism by the premature death of their husbands to whom they had been
wedded, but whom they had never known, to lifelong widowhood, and
therefore in most cases to lifelong contempt and drudgery. For they were
debarred henceforth from fulfilling the supreme function of Hindu
womanhood, _i.e._ securing the continuity of family ri