Darkest India / A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"

by Frederick St. George De Lautour Booth-Tucker

(4) THE MATRIMONIAL BUREAU.

A thoroughly confidential matrimonial bureau which would wisely advise people desirous of getting married, would certainly be of great service in India. Its operations would no doubt be small in the beginning, but as it got to be known and trusted it would be more and more resorted to.

Even supposing that outsiders should hold aloof from it, we should have a large inside constituency to whom its operations would be very valuable, and it would be thoroughly in accordance with native notions for the mutual negotiations to be carried on in such a way.

Missionaries are everywhere largely resorted to in regard to questions of this kind; and we have every reason to believe that it would be so with ourselves, and we should thus be able largely to guard our people against ill-assorted matches, and to furnish them with wise counsel on the subject.