The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-03-31

and prosecutions and commands the re- spect of a saint from all persons. She is the mother of all the children in the neighborhood, the helpmate of all the neighbors. At evening they flock round to hear her repeat the ancient legends the stories of Sita and Saivtri, Draup- dia, or sing the songs of Mira Bai. She is in great demand when cooking is needed for a sacred feast. She teaches the little ones their first hymns and prayers. She nurses the sick, comforts the dying.
 She believes herself to be bound to her husband for everlasting time, through all births and deaths. The mo- mentary separation here is but one shade of her marriage, an unknowable mystery-it breaks no tie.'
 No one is a separate unit in India. The sons never leave their parental rooftree. All narry-marriage with them is as birth and death, inevitable and their children are added to the fam fly. There are always widowed aunts, other grandparents-n relative is ever left to shift for himself in India-so that households of one hundred and fifty are not, uncommon. Add almost as many servants, and we have some idea of the occupation and cares of the mistress of such home. The servants quarters surround the yard or compound and the ladies of the household care for them as did the stately danes of old Virginia in the plantation-life before the war. The great zenana courtyards stretch back to fruit and vegetable gar dens, and there are tanks or artificial ponds where ladies and children bathe in seelusion. Blossoming trees rise above hedges that jealously guard these sacred retreats, where family may sport in private with freedom unknown to us, and suited to their shy, poetic, playful natures, that only unfold when with each other caring as little to sec the world outside as to be seen by it."
 The one great worry of a Hindu wo- mans life may be an aged bore of mother-in-lay. It is amusing to find that the mother -in-law is really one of the seven jokes of the world. She is found everywhere. even in most ancient Sanskrit and Arabic literature The +dOildlllSudIl says ne UeSt OI InOtH- ers-in-law is like a large boil" while the subtle Hindu declares: However good a mother-in-law may be, she is, nevertheless, a mother-in-law." With certain sects of Vaishnavite Brahmins, the daughter-in-law. though living in the same house, is not allowed to speak to her husbands mother. This is the only way to solve the problem. When she has anything to communicate, she does it by signs. When orders are giv- en she replies only by an inclination of the head. It is said, however, that at times she makes up for her enforced si- lence by spirited and expressive ges- lures, and that her dumb repartees often cause her mother-in-law to boil with rage; and that we may expect much when the Hindu woman steps over the footlights. Bibi knows all this; but in time she will become a mother-in-law herself.
 The person of a high-class Indian woman Is sacred. She can never be touched even with the tips of the fin- gers. She is looked upon almost as a goddess. She can frequent the most crowded public place without being ! subject to insult. A man that would gaze at female passing by. as our loungers do would be thought most unmannered and unedueated person. All this gives her an air of dignity pur- ity, self-possession that is beautiful to