ways, yet sending out their sons and daughters to
school and college and professional life.

Of that village Pushpam's father is the teacher-catechist, a gentle,
white-haired man, who long ago set up his rule of benevolent autocracy,
"for the good of the governed."

"To this child God has given sense; he shall go to the high school in
the town." The catechist speaks with the conviction of a Scotch Dominie
who has discovered a child "of parts," and resistance on the part of the
parent is vain. The Dominie's own twelve are all children "of parts" and
all have left the thatched schoolhouse for the education of the city.

Pushpam is the youngest. Term after term finds her leaving the village,
jogging the thirty miles of dust-white road to the town, spending the
night in the crowded discomfort of the third class compartment K marked
for "Indian females." Vacation after vacation finds her reversing the
order of journeying, plunging from the twentieth century life of
college into the village's mediaeval calm. There is no lack of
occupation--letters to write for the unlearned of the older generation
to their children far afield, clerks and writers and pastors in distant
parts; there are children to coach for coming examinations; there are
sore eyes to treat, and fevers to reduce.

One Christmas Pushpam returns as usual, yet not as usual, for her
capable presence has lost its customary calm. She is "anxious and
troubled about many things," or is it about one?

Social unrest has dominated college thinking this last term, focussing
its avenging eyes upon that Dowry System which works debt and eventual
ruin in many a South Indian home. Pushpam has seen the family struggles
that have accompanied the marriages of her older sisters; the "cares of
the world" that have pressed until all the joy of days that should have
been festal was lost in the counting out of rupees. In neighbor homes
she has seen rejoicing at the birth of a son, as the bringer of
prosperity, and grief, hardly concealed, at the adversity of a
daughter's advent. Unchristian? Yes; but not for the lack of the milk of
human kindness; rather from the incubus of an evil social system,
inherited from Hindu ancestors.

Pushpam's father is growing old; lands and jewels have shrunk. Married
sons and daughters are already gathering and saving for the future of
their own young daughters. Three thousand rupees are demanded of Pushpam
in the marriage market. The thought of