wrote to
her. He told her of the millions of girls shut up in those "citadels of
heathenism," the zenanas of India,--a problem which only Christian women
might hope to solve. Half playfully, half in earnest, he added, "Why
don't you come out and help?" As swift as wind and wave permitted was
Isabella Thoburn's answer, "I am coming as soon as the way opens!"

Already a group of women, stirred to the depths by the words of Mrs.
Edwin W. Parker and Mrs. William Butler, returned missionaries from
India, were forming a Society to help the women and girls of Christless
lands. At the first public meeting of this Woman's Foreign Missionary
Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, though but twenty women were
present with but three hundred dollars in the treasury, when they
learned that Isabella Thoburn,--gifted, consecrated, wise,--was ready to
go to India, they exclaimed, "Shall we lose Miss Thoburn because we have
not the needed money in our hands to send her? No, rather let us walk
the streets of Boston in our calico dresses, and save the expense of
more costly apparel!" Thus was answered the letter written with the
feather from the vulture's wing by the wayside in India. In 1870,
Isabella Thoburn gathered six little waifs into her first school in
India, a one-roomed building in the noisy, dusty bazaar of Lucknow. From
this brave venture have grown the Middle School, the High School, and
finally in 1886 the first woman's Christian College in all Asia, housed
in the Ruby Garden, Lal Bagh. Here for thirty-one years Isabella Thoburn
lived and loved and labored for the girls of India.

CHAPTER THREE

I. THE GARDEN OF HID TREASURE

Prelude: Why go to College?

"Why should an Indian girl want a college education?" queried Mary
Smith, as she listened to her roommate's account of the "Lighting of the
Christmas Candles." "I can see why she would need to learn to read and
write, and even a high school course I wouldn't mind; but college seems
to me perfectly silly, and an awful waste of good money. Why, from our
own home high school there are only six of us at college."

Mary Smith, fresh from "Main Street," may be less provincial than she
sounds. Her question puts up a real problem. When only one girl in one
hundred has a chance at the Three R's, is it right to "waste money" on
giving certain others the chance to delve into psychology and higher
mathematics? When there is not bread enough to go around, why should
so