“NOT IN THE GOOD TIMES.”
One Saturday afternoon as Edith and Marty entered the room where the meetings of the band were held, half a dozen girls rushed to them, exclaiming,
“Oh, what do you think! Mary Cresswell has a letter from Mrs. C——!”
How eager they all were to hear that letter! As soon as the opening exercises were over, Miss Walsh told Mary she might read it. The young secretary looked quite proud and important as she unfolded the letter, very tenderly, indeed, for it was written on thin paper, as foreign letters are, and she was afraid of tearing it.
After speaking very nicely of the letter she had received from them, Mrs. C—— went on to tell them something about Lahore and about the school they were interested in. She said:
“You must not imagine a well-arranged schoolroom with desks, maps, black-boards, and so on. We cannot afford anything like that, and in any case it would be useless to the kind of pupils we have. We pay a woman a little for the use of part of the room in which she lives, and while the school is in session she goes on with her work in one corner. This room is quite dark, as, having no windows, all the light it receives is from the door. It has no furniture to speak of. The teacher and pupils sit on the earth floor.”
She then described the dress of the little girls, which certainly did not appear to be very comfortable for the cool weather they sometimes have in North India, and said, “No matter how poor and scanty the clothing, they must have some kind of jewelry, even if it is only glass or brass bangles. They are anything but cleanly, as they are not taught in their own homes to be so; besides, some of their customs are considerably against cleanliness. For instance, they must not wash themselves at all for a certain length of time after the death of relatives. So it sometimes happens the children come to school in a very dirty condition.”
These children, Mrs. C—— said, were bright and learned quite readily. She mentioned some of the hymns and Scripture verses they knew, and some of the answers they had given to questions she put to them.
“But the great difficulty is,” she wrote, “they are taken away from school so young to be married and thus lost to us. Still it is good to think that they receive some religious instruction, and matters in regard to girls and women in India are gradually improving. Not quite so much stress is laid on child-marriage; indeed, some native societies are being formed for the purpose of opposing this custom, and many more girls are allowed to attend school than used to be the case.
“But there is room yet for great improvement. You, my young friends, in your happy childhood and girlhood, cannot conceive the miseries of these poor little creatures. Thank God your lot is cast in a Christian land, and oh! do all you can to send the gospel light into these dark places of the earth.”