nd returned home, not so welcome as before, but not
considered too defiled to be reckoned a son of the household still. His
father is dead, his mother is a bitter opponent, but his brother has
come since, and within a stone's-throw another; and so it goes on: the
life has a chance to tell. Almost every time we have gone to that
village we have found some ready for baptism, and though none of the
mothers have been won, they witness to the change in the life of their
sons. "My boy's heart is as white as milk now," said one, who had stood
by and seen that boy tied up and flogged for Christ's sake. They rarely
"change their religion," these staunch old souls; "let me go where my
husband is; he would have none of it!" said one, and nothing seems to
move them; but they let their boys live at home, and perhaps, even yet,
the love will break down their resistance. They are giving it a chance.

I think this one illustration explains more than many words would the
difference between work among the Classes and the Masses, and why it is
that one form of work is so much more fruitful than the other.

The Masses must not be understood as a vast casteless Mass, out-casted
by the Classes, for the Caste system runs down to the very lowest
stratum, but their Caste rules allow of freer intercourse with others.
We may visit in their houses more freely, enter more freely into their
thoughts, share more freely in the interests of their lives. We are less
outside, as it were. But the main difference between the one set of
people and the other lies deeper; it is a difference underground. It
works out, however, into something all can see. Among the Masses, "mass
movements" are of common occurrence; among the Classes, with rare
exceptions, each one must come out alone.

[Illustration: A village woman of the Shanar Caste. The photo shows the
baby's ears being prepared for the jewels her mother hopes will fill
them by and by. Holes are made first and filled with cotton wool,
graduated leaden weights are added till the lobes are long enough.]

This is often forgotten by observers of the Indian Field from the home
side. There are parts of that field where the labourers seem to be
always binding up sheaves and singing harvest songs; and from other
parts come fewer songs, for the sheaves are fewer there, or it may be
there are none at all, only a few poor ears of corn, and they had to be
gathered one by one, and they do not show in the field.