ently acclimatized for the parents to be able to supplement in
their own homes the education given to their children in our schools and
colleges. Nor am I speaking of the students who live in hostels under
the superintendence of high-minded Englishmen, and especially of
missionaries such as those of the Oxford Mission in Calcutta, or the
Madras Christian College, who have to reject scores of applicants for
want of space. Those also form but a small minority. In Calcutta, for
instance, out of 4,500 students barely 1,000 live in hostels, and not
all hostels are by any means satisfactory. In the Indian Universities
there is no collegiate life such as English Universities afford, and in
India most of the secondary schools as well as colleges are
non-residential. The majority of those who attend them, unless they live
at home, have therefore to board out with friends or to live in
promiscuous messes, or, as is too often the case, in lodgings of a very
undesirable character, sometimes even in brothels, and almost always
under conditions intellectually, morally, and physically deleterious.

Lest I may be accused of exaggeration or bias, I will appeal here to the
testimony of Dr. Garfield Williams, a missionary of the highest repute
and experience, and in profound sympathy with the natives of India.
Speaking at the Missionary Conference at Calcutta last winter, he
said:--

The conditions and environment of the student in Calcutta
are such as to make the formation of character almost impossible....
He is not a student in the best sense of
the word, for he has not the scholarly instincts of a student--
I speak, of course, of the average student, not of the exceptional
one. His parents send him to the University to pass
one or two examinations, and these have to be passed in order
to enable him to attain a higher salary.... His work
is sheer "grind." The acquisition of good notes for lectures
is the first essential for him, and the professor who gives
good clear-cut notes so that a man can dispense with any
text-books is the popular professor--and for two reasons:
first of all, it saves the expense of buying the text-book,
and then, of course, it helps to get through the examination.
That is a reason why two boys of the same village will go
to different colleges because they can then "swap" notes.
It is a very rare thing for a student to have money enough
to buy more than on