hawl over her head is a
little girl about the same age as the boy. She has been grinding corn
between two stones and is a very thin and miserable little wretch. Her
clothes are rags and there are no bangles on her little brown ankles.
Ramaswamy tells us she is a widow! That child? She has probably never
even seen the boy-husband who was so unlucky as to die; but because he
did she is scorned by everyone. The worst life in all India is that of a
widow. She has no ornaments, no amusements, and is treated worse than a
slavey in a boarding-house, and for her there is no escape.

[Illustration: A POTTER.]

Right out in the street sits a man weaving a web of wonderful colours;
he throws the shuttles, carrying different coloured threads, across and
across, without seeming to look at them, and all the time the web is
growing into an intricate pattern under his fingers. So his father wove,
and his grandfather and great-grandfather. All these crafts run in
families. A little farther on is a potter spinning a wheel with his
feet, while the soft lump of dull-coloured clay takes shape beneath his
clever thumb as it races round. It seems to grow and swell and curve
exquisitely as if it were a living thing. There are few sights more
fascinating than a potter at work. You have often heard of the "potter's
thumb," I expect? The thumb grows broad and flat and capable, because it
is the chief instrument with which the potter works. On the floor beside
him lie many of the clay jars of different sizes and shapes ready for
the baking, others are being baked. There is always a good sale for
them, and a potter in India flourishes exceedingly. Even now there is a
woman passing us with a pot balanced on her head and a child on her
hip. She swings along in the dust with a graceful gliding step, for she
has been used to carrying things on her head almost from babyhood. These
pots are brittle enough and frequently get broken, and even the poorest
households must have a supply of them. But what helps the potter to make
a living more than anything else is the custom that when a death occurs
in a family, or a new life arrives in it, all the pots must be broken
and new ones bought! It is a symbol of the life that has gone out and
the new life beginning.

In church you must have heard those grandly poetic lines--

"Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the
pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cis