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GUNGA DIN ON DRESS PARADE.
Ordinarily the Indian water carrier, or bhisti, is attired more nearly after the manner described in Kipling's poem:
"The uniform 'e wore
Was nothing much before
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind.
For a twisty piece o' rag and a goatskin leather bag
Was all the field equipment 'e could find."
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"My friends have persuaded me that I ought not to marry a very young girl," he said to the agent, "get an older one therefore--oh, it doesn't matter if she is twenty-four."
The agent left and two days thereafter the Hindu received this message: "Can't find one of twenty-four. How about two of twelve each?"
The sorrows of a superseded wife, however, are as nothing to the troubles of a Hindu widow. The teaching of Brahminism is that she is responsible through some evil committed either in this existence or a previous one, for the death of her husband, and the cruelest indignities of the Hindu social system are reserved for the bereaved and unfortunate woman. If a man or boy die, no matter if his wife is yet a prattling girl in her mother's home, she can never remarry, but is doomed to live forever as a despised slave in the home of his father and mother. Her jewels are torn from her; her head is shaved; and she is forced to wear clothing in keeping with the humiliation the gods are supposed to have justly inflicted upon her. In a school I visited in Calcutta I was told that there were two little widows, one five years old and one six.