a spasmodic attendance at Evensong,
especially on week-days. The nineteen double doors, most of them
standing open in the hot weather when wind and dust are not too
aggressive, give an opportunity for taking stock of the situation
before coming inside. They are also available as roads of retreat,
supposing circumstances are suggestive of danger.

When, after a rather prolonged season on account of the plague
lingering longer than usual in the city, our visitors went back to
their homes and we were left in comparative peace, we felt that,
besides the dying down of the spirit of opposition, it had also been a
useful time of education concerning Christian manners and customs, if
nothing more. But without the two agencies of the pictures and the
church, I do not see that we could have attained either of these
results.

There are some indications that the efforts which are now being made
to introduce more rational methods of teaching are beginning to
influence favourably the young Indian mind. That a large number of
students under the old regime have been lamentable failures nobody
denies, and much of the discontent of recent years, leading in some
instances to serious political crime, has been the inevitable fruit of
the foreign secular education which we have brought. But there is a
distinctly new type of Indian schoolboy appearing, amongst the
thousands of lads who are getting their education in Poona City. Some
of them not unfrequently find their way to the village Mission-house
on half-holiday afternoons, and ask to see the church, or beg for a
picture post-card. They talk a little English, dropping back into the
vernacular with some relief when unable to say exactly what they want
in the foreign tongue. They rather incline to English dress; in some
cases even substituting knickerbockers, or trousers, for the Hindu
_dhota_. The picturesque and useful turban they unfortunately give up
altogether, and wear instead a small round cap. Many of them have
ceased to shave their head, and are rather proud of their hair, which
they wear foppishly long in front. They only nominally retain the
Hindu _shinde_, or little pigtail. That is to say, the hair at the
crown of the head is left slightly longer than the rest, but it is
hardly noticeable. Some of them have a watch chain, but there is not
always a watch at the end of it.

Their manners are generally polite and courteous, except that some of
them, while retaining their caps