How omnipresent the influence of the old Vedânta is, even in the lower strata of Indian society, I can, perhaps, show best if I repeat here a story which I have told once before, the story of a poor little girl and her boyish husband. I came to hear that story through her friends who were the friends of Keshub Chunder Sen. We must try to understand, first of all, that it is possible in India for a girl of nine and a boy of twelve to fall in love and to be married, or, rather, to be betrothed. To us such a state of things seems most unnatural; but as long as the custom prevails and is looked upon with favour rather than with disapproval, we can hardly blame a young peasant boy and a still younger peasant girl for following the example set them by their father, mother, and all their friends. That hearts so young are capable of mutual affection and devotion we know from the biographies of some of our own most distinguished men. Nay, we are told by the people of India that the years of their boyish love form the happiest years of their life. As a rule, these young couples remain for some time with their relations—they are like brother and sister; and as they grow up they have the feeling that, like their father and mother, brothers and sisters, husband and wife also are given, not chosen, and the idea that the bonds of their betrothal could ever be severed never enters their minds. The custom itself is no doubt both objectionable and mischievous, and those who have laboured to get it abolished by law deserve our strongest sympathy. All I wish to say here is that we must not make an innocent, ignorant couple, living in an Indian village, responsible for the perversity of a whole nation. How perverse a nation can be may be seen from an Indian newspaper calling itself _The Indian Nation_, which first denies that Hindu widows are unhappy, and then adds “that, according to Hindu ideas, they ought to be unhappy, because the end of life is not happiness, nor the gratification of dreams, but the regulation, or, if possible, the extinction of them.” The widow’s life, we are told, was not meant to be joyful, nor should it be rendered joyful or useful, because Hindu ethics are not utilitarian like ours.