ing when the helot, the serf, the ryot, the moujik, the fellah, the negro, the proletarian and the and the working-girl will stand transfigured in the sight of humanity, like Jesus in the garden, as the saviours and martyrs of Labour, the unconscious prophets of the golden age to come. Then the plaints and groans of these our tender sisters will resound in the ears of our grandchildren, not as wails of woe, but as poeans of triumph, for who will dare think of grief in that happy time? Then all sorrow will lecome sacred, because it has been the price of the victory. Then these heroic women will stand foremost on the pedestals of our statues. Tyranny may last so long as it torments men, for they can endure it: but it sounds its own death-knell when it touches women and children, for then it kindles the spark of heroism even in the flinty bosoms of the selfish and the indifferent. That stage has been reached in the West. It is darkest before dawn, and poverty has now reached that point, which marks the beginning of its end for all time.

As a consequence of this terrible condition of things, many men desert their wives, and the "Boston Transcript" ascribes the growing frequency of this evil to economic circumstances. The recent investigations of the Royal Commission on Divorce in England revealed the fact that many young women did not wish to have children at all! What a scathing condemnation of "civilisation" is implied in this unnatural phenomenon! This is civilised Europe which kills out the maternal instinct by luxury among the rich, and want among the poor! This stage marks the last gasp of the woman's despair, for a woman who renounces the right of motherhood is like a man who commits suicide. A man lives for the sake of living, but a woman lives for her children. But everything is topsy-turvy in this society, where woman has been reduced to a condition of wretchedness, compared with which the harem and the kraal are heaven itself.

I draw the veil over the darker aspects of

the question. The "social evil," a euphemism employed by refined persons in talking of the degradation of thousands of women through poverty and the exigencies of the present marriage-system, is the product of these institutions, on which Europe plumes herself. Congresses meet to discuss the "white slave traffic," which is an organised trade now as it was in the days of Harounal-rashid or the Mahdi. Modern Europe is not a whit better in this respect than Morocco or old Turkestan. The "maiden tribute" is exacted by the rich and the profligate from the working classes today as it was in antiquity. Thus Europe honours its women! Those who wish to know more about the human side of this tragedy may read the reports of special commissions and Bernard Shaw's play "Mrs. Warren's Profession." These armies of "abandoned" women are the nemesis of society in the West. Their existence is due not to human depravity, but to economic conditions and the marriage-customs of the people.

I also pass over in silence some other ghastly evils that afflict women here as a conseqence of all these conditions. There are many things about which silence is more eloquent than speech. And one essay can not cover the whole ground.

In conclusion, I may be allowed to hope that woman, both in the East and the West, will emerge from this slough of despond by the united efforts of young men and women of all nations. Neither the East, ancient or modern, nor the West, nor again a union of the two, but something higher than both, will save us. Some noble souls dream of the interchange of ideas and ideals between the East and the West, but that will not give us much. Barbarism added to barbarism remains barbarism still. Above the East and the West, far from the present misery of both, shines the light of truth, freedom and social co-operation, that beckons us. And the message of the happy Future of Humanity to the perplexed and miserable Present is: "Follow the gleam. Follow the gleam."

HAR DAYAL.

MY

Y five years' old daughter Mini cannot live without chattering. I really believe that in all her life she has not wasted a minute in silence. Her mother is often vexed at this, and would stop her prattle, but I cannot feel so. To see Mini quiet is so unnatural that I cannot bear it long. And so my own conversation with her is always animated.

One morning, for instance, when I was in the midst of the seventeenth chapter of my new novel, my little Mini stole into the room, and putting her hand into mine, said, "Father! Ramdayal the door-keeper calls a crow a krow! He doesn't know anything, does he?"

Before I could explain to her the differences of language in this world, she was embarked on the full tide of another subject. "What do you think, Father? Bhola says there is an elephant in the clouds, blowing water out of his trunk, and that is why it rains!"

And then, darting off anew, while I sat still making ready some reply to this last remark, "Father! what relation is Mother to you?"

"My dear little sister in the law!" I murmured involuntarily to myself, but with a grave face contrived to answer, "Go and play with Bhola, Mini! I am busy!"

The window of my room overlooked the road. The child had seated herself at my feet near my table, and was playing softly, drumming on her knees. I was hard at work on my seventeenth chapter,-where Protap Singh the hero had just caught Kanchanlata the heroine in his arms, and both were about to escape by the third storey window of the Castle, when all of a sudden Mini left her play, and ran to the window, crying "A Cabuliwallah! Cabuliwallah!" Sure enough in the street below was a Cabuliwallah passing slowly

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along. He wore the loose soiled clothing of his people, with a tall turban; there was a bag on his back, and he carried boxes of grapes in his hand.

I cannot tell what were my daughter's feelings, at the sight of this man, but she began to call him loudly. "Ah!" I thought, "he will come in, and my seventeenth chapter will never be finished!" At which exact moment the Cabuliwallah turned and looked up at the child. When she saw this, however, overcome by terror, she turned to flee to her Mother's protection and completely disappeared. She had a blind belief that inside the bag that the big man carried there were perhaps two or three other children like herself. The pedlar meanwhile entered my doorway, and greeted me with a smiling face.

My first impulse, precarious as was the position of my hero and my heroine, was to stop and buy something, since the man had been called. So I made some small purchases, and a conversation began about Abdurrahman, the Russians, the English, and the Frontier Policy.

As he was about to leave, however, he asked, "And where is the little girl, Sir?" And I, thinking that Mini must get rid of her false fear, had her brought out.

But she stood by my chair, and looked at the Cabuliwallah and his bag. He offered nuts and raisins, but she would not be tempted, and only clung the closer to me, with all her doubts increased.

This was their first meeting.

One morning, however, not many days later, as I was leaving the house, I was startled to find Mini, seated on a bench near the door, laughing and talking, with the great Cabuliwallah at her feet. In all her life, it appeared, my small daughter had not found, save her father, so patient a listener. And already the corner of her

little sari was stuffed with almonds and raisins, the gift of her visitor. "Why did you give her those?" I said, and taking out an eight-anna bit, I handed it to him. The man accepted the money without demur, and slipped it into his pocket.

Alas, on my return, an hour later, I found that unfortunate coin had made twice its own worth of trouble! For the Cabuliwallah had given it to Mini, and her Mother catching sight of the bright round object, had pounced on the child with, "Where did you get that eight-anna bit?"

"The Cabuliwallah gave it me", said Mini cheerfully.

"The Cabuliwallah gave it you!" cried her Mother much shocked, "Oh Mini! how could you take it from him?"

I, entering at the moment, saved her from the impending disaster, and proceeded to make my own enquiries.

It was not the first or second time, I found, that the two had met. The Cabuliwallah had overcome the child's first terror by a judicious bribery of nuts and almonds, and the two were now great friends.

They had a succession of quaint jokes which afforded them much amusement. Seated in front of him, looking down on his gigantic frame in all her tiny dignity, Mini's face would ripple over with laughter, and she would begin, "O Cabuliwallah, Cabuliwallah, what have you got in your bag?"

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And he would reply, in the nasal accents of the mountaineer, "An Elephant!" much cause for merriment, perhaps, but how they both enjoyed the witticism! And for me, this child's talk with a grown-up man had always in it something strangely fascinating.

Then the Cabuliwallah, not to be behindhand, would begin in his turn, "Well, little one, and when are you going to the fatherin-law's house ?"

Now most small Bengali maidens have heard long ago about the father-in-law's house, only we being a little new-fangled, had kept these things from our child, and Mini at this question must have been a trifle bewildered. But she would not show it, and with ready tact replied, "Are you going there?"

Amongst men of the Cabuliwallah's class, however, it is well-known that the words

father-in-law's house have a double meaning. It is a euphemism for jail, the place where we are so well cared for, at no expense to ourselves. In this sense would the sturdy pedlar take my daughter's question. "Ah!" he would say, shaking his fist at an invisible policeman, "I will thrash my father-inlaw!" Hearing this, and picturing the poor discomforted relative, Mini would go off into peals of laughter, in which her formidable friend would join.

These were autumn mornings, -the very time of year when kings of old would go forth to conquest, and I never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country my heart would go out to it, and at the sight of a foreigner in the streets I would fall to weaving a network of dreams,— the mountains, the glens, and the forests of his distant home, with his cottage in its setting, and the free and independent life of distant wilds. Perhaps all the more because I lead such a vegetable existence that a call to travel would fall upon me like a thunderbolt, do the scenes of travel conjure themselves up before me, and pass and repass in my imagination. In the presence of this Cabuliwallah I was immediately transported to the foot of arid mountain-peaks with narrow little defiles twisting in and out amongst their towering heights. I could see the string of camels bearing the merchandise, and the company of turbaned merchants, carrying some of them queer old firearms, and some of them spears, journeying downward towards the plains. I could see-but at some such point Mini's Mother would intervene, imploring me to "beware of that man."

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Mini's Mother is unfortunately a timid individual. Whenever she hears a noise in the street, or sees people coming towards the house, she always jumps to the conclusion that they are either thieves, or drunkards, or snakes, or tigers, or malaria or cockroaches, or caterpillars, or an English sailor. Even after all these years of experience she is not able to overcome this terror. So she was full of doubts about the Cabuliwallah, and used to beg me to keep a watchful eye on him.

I tried to laugh her fear gently away,