deed the very
word "case" sounds curiously inappropriate when one thinks of the
nurseries and their little inhabitants; or looks up to see mischievous
eyes watching a chance to stop the uninteresting writing; or feels,
suddenly, soft arms round one's neck, as a baby, strayed from her own
domain, climbs unexpectedly up from behind and makes dashes at the
typewriter keyboard. Such little living interruptions are too frequent
to allow of these chapters being anything but human.

The newspaper clippings are usually concerned with public movements,
resolutions, petitions, and the like. There is one startling little
paragraph from a London paper, dated July 7, 1906; the ignorance of the
subject so flippantly dealt with is its only apology. No one could have
written so had he understood. The occasion was the memorial addressed to
the Governor in Council by workers for the children in the Bombay
Presidency:--

"Society must be very select in Poona. There has been a custom there for
young ladies to be married to selected gods. You would have thought that
to be the bride of a god was a good enough marriage for anyone. But it
is not good enough for Poona." It is time that such writing became
impossible for any Englishman.

In India the feeling of the best men, whether Hindu or Christian, is
strongly against the dedication of little children to Temples, and some
of the newspapers of the land speak out and say so in unmistakable
language. The _Indian Times_ speaks of the little ones being "steeped
deep from their childhood" in all that is most wrong. A Hindu, writing
in the _Epiphany_, puts the matter clearly when he says: "Finally, one
can hardly conceive of anything more debasing than to dedicate innocent
little girls to gods in the name of religion, and then leave them with
the Temple priests"; and another writer in the same paper asks a
question which those who say that Hinduism is good enough for India
might do well to ponder: "If this is not a Hindu practice, how can it
take place in a Temple and no priest stop it, though all know? . . . In
London religion makes wickedness go away; but in Bombay religion brings
wickedness, and Government has to try to make it go away." This immense
contrast of fact and of ideal contains our answer to all who would put
sin in India on a level with sin in England.

Christian writers naturally, whether in the _Christian Patriot_ of the
South or the _Bombay Guardian_ of the West, have no doubt