The well-to-do Parsees have been conspicuous in philanthropy, endowing colleges, hospitals and other charities. While they are counted among the staunchest friends of British rule, they are also among the most intelligent critics of the government's faults. Sir Pherosha M. Mehta, the leading Parsee orator, is prominent in the national congress movement. At a reception given at the hotel, and on other occasions, we had an opportunity to meet a number of the Parsees, men and women, priests and laymen, and found them abreast with the times and alive to the problems with which the world is wrestling to-day.
I cannot close this article without mentioning the increasing presence of American influence in Bombay. An American minister, Dr. Mell, is pastor of the principal Methodist church, and the American Congregationalists have a largely attended school for boys and girls in the city. Many of the students were taken from famine-stricken homes and are being educated with American money. There is also here a school for the blind under American management, where the students are not only taught to read and write, but trained in the industries for which they are fitted.
I do not apologize for mentioning from time to time the institutions which altruistic Americans have scattered over the Orient. If we can not boast that the sun never sets on American territory, we can find satisfaction in the fact that the sun never sets on American philanthropy; if the boom of our cannon does not follow the Orb of Day in his daily round, the grateful thanks of those who have been the beneficiaries of American generosity form a chorus that encircles the globe.
ASSEMBLING FOR THE BOMBAY MEETING.
(SEE PAGE 474)