it, just what is going on.

I am thinking of one such now. She was four years old when I first began
to visit in her grandmother's house. She is six now--only six--but her
demoralisation is almost complete. It is as if you saw a hand pull a
rosebud on its stem, crumple and crush it, rub the pink loveliness into
pulp, drop it then--and you pick it up. But it is not a rosebud now. Oh,
these things, the knowledge of them, is as a fire shut up in one's
bones! shut up, for one cannot let it all out--it must stay in and burn.

. . . . . . .

Those who know nothing of the facts will be sure to criticise. "It is
not an unknown thing for persons to act as critics, even though
supremely ignorant of the subject criticised." But those who know the
truth of these things well know that we have understated it, carefully
toned it down perforce, because it cannot be written in full. It could
neither be published nor read.

It cannot be written or published or read, but oh, it has to be lived!
_And what you may not even hear, must be endured by little girls._ There
are child-wives in India to-day, of twelve, ten, nine, and even eight
years old. "Oh, you mean betrothed! Another instance of missionary
exaggeration!" We mean married.

"But of course the law interferes!" Perhaps you have heard of the law
which makes wifehood illegal under twelve. With reference to this law
the Hon. Manomoham Ghose of the High Court of Calcutta writes:--"If the
Government thinks that the country is not yet prepared for such
legislation" (by which he means drastic legislation) "as I suggest, I
can only express my regret that by introducing the present Bill it has
indefinitely postponed the introduction of a substantial measure of
reform, which is urgently called for."

There are men and women in India to whom many a day is a nightmare, and
this fair land an Inferno, because of what they know of the wrong that
is going on. For that is the dreadful part of it. It is not like the
burning alive of the widows, it is not a horror passed. It is going on
steadily day and night. Sunlight, moonlight, and darkness pass, the one
changing into the other; but all the time they are passing, this Wrong
holds the hours with firm and strong hands, and uses them for its
purpose--the murder of little girls. Meanwhile, what can be done by you
and by me to hasten the day of its ending? Those who know can tell what
they know, or so much as wil