belonged occupied a highly respected position in Hindu society, which in India is fortunately quite compatible with extreme poverty. Much as both she and her husband had been loved and respected before, they were now despised, avoided, excommunicated. Even the allowance which they had received from their family was ordered to be reduced to a minimum, and in order to fit himself to earn an independent livelihood, the husband had to enter as a student in one of the Government colleges, while his little wife had to look after their small household. Soon there came a new trial. Her husband’s father, who had renounced his son when he joined Keshub Chunder Sen’s church, died broken-hearted, and the duty of performing the funeral rites (_S_râddha) fell on his son. To neglect to perform these rites is considered something awful, because it is supposed to deprive the departed of all hope of eternal life. The son was quite ready to perform all that was essential in such rites, but he declared that he would never take part in any of the usual idolatrous ceremonies. In spite of the prayers of his relatives and the protestations of the whole village, he would not yield. He fled the very night that the funeral ceremony was to take place, accompanied again by no one except his brave little wife. Thereupon his father’s brothers stopped all allowances due to him, and he was left with eight rupees per month to support his wife and mother. _S_rîmatî however managed, with this small pittance, to maintain not only herself and her husband but her husband’s mother also, who had become insane, his little sister, and a nurse. Under these changed circumstances her husband found it impossible to continue his career at the Presidency College, and had to migrate to Dacca to prosecute his studies there. Here they all lived together again, and though they were sometimes almost starving, _S_rîmatî considered these years the happiest of her life. She herself tried to perfect her education by attending an Adult Female School, and so rapid was her progress, that on one occasion she was chosen to read an address to Lord Northbrook when he visited the school at Dacca.