had recently attended, the bride
being a girl of eleven and the groom a year or two older. In
Secunderabad a friend of mine found a week-old Brahmin girl baby who
had been given in marriage, and in the house where he visited was a
ten-year-old girl who had been married two years before to a man of
thirty.

In prescribing a marriageable age for high-caste Hindu girls Manu
named eight as a minimum age and twelve as the maximum. The father who
delays finding a husband for his daughter until after she is twelve is
regarded as having committed a crime--though it must always be
remembered that girls and boys in India mature a year or two younger
than boys and girls in the United States.

One reason for arranging early marriages is that the cost increases
with the age of the girl, and the wedding ceremonies in all cases are
expensive enough. Weddings in India furnish about as much excitement
as circuses at home. My first introduction to a Hindu wedding was in
Agra one Sunday afternoon--though Sunday in the Orient, of course, is
the same as any other day--and the shops were in full blast (if such a
strenuous term may be used concerning the serene and listless Hindu
merchant) and the craftsmen and potters were as busy as they ever are.
From afar the sound of drums smote my ear, and as the deafening
hullabaloo came nearer its volume and violence increased until it
would have sufficed to bring down the walls of Jericho in half the
time Joshua took for the job. Just behind the drummers came two
gorgeously clad small boys astride an ass begarlanded with flowers;
and when the musicians stopped for a minute to tighten their drums so
as {239} to make confusion worse confounded, I made inquiry as to the
meaning of the procession. Then it developed that the eight-year-old
small boy in front, dressed in red and yellow silk and gauze and who
ought to have been at home studying the Second Reader, was on his way
to be married, and the little chap riding behind him was the brother
of the bride. It was very hard to realize that such tots were not
merely "playing wedding" instead of being principal participants in a
serious ceremony!

The wedding-feast which I attended in Delhi was arranged for a couple
who came from the higher ranks of Hindu society, and though no one
could have asked for a more gracious welcome than my American friend
and I received, I very much doubt if any one of the high-caste folk
about us would have condescended to e