It is the 15th of the month Bœdromion, when commence the Eleusinian Mysteries—the greater mysteries celebrated alone in the city of Cecrops—those sacred rites founded by Demeter herself (the Grecian Ceres) when wandering in long search for her daughter Persephone, she was kindly received and entertained in Attica, when she rewarded their hospitality by giving them the fruits of the earth, and these holiest and noblest institutions of the Hellenic religion. What parent bends to take a farewell of his wife and child ere he departs to perform his duties of _dadouchos_, or torch-bearer, to whom alone it was permitted to marry? The golden-hair of the Grecian father mingles with the dark locks of the woman and her son as they unite in the parting embrace. She is not of the _Autocthones_, no child of the soil, or she would join her husband in the initiation. Far other rites has she early bowed to in the flowering forests of India—these she has changed for Grecian faith, but yet yearns for something purer—may she not hope for it? Faith ever rules all hearts more or less, and often most the weakest—thus to the most erring child of earth is given return and repentance—thus to the feeblest soul the sublimest trust is granted. Will not Demetros “point to other worlds and show the way” for Ganga? Curious the mother and the delighted child have watched day by day the progress of the Eleusinian, observed during the nine days festival, Demetros leading the procession. That first night he had entered the holy of holies—that mystic temple he had entered crowned with myrtle—there, pure and cleansed from sin, washed with holy water, he had listened to the reading, the exposition of the holy mysteries, from the rigid leaves of the stone volume which contained the divine inspiration—then followed the long processions in which the child might one day join, but never the foreign mother—the pilgrimage to the sea-shore for purification—the fasting and sacrifice—the sacred procession with baskets of pomegranates and poppy-seeds, borne on a wagon drawn by oxen—the torch procession to the temple at Eleusis—the bearing of the image of Jachus, the son of Demeter, and on the night of the sixth day the final initiation, the entrance into the lighted sanctuary, where they beheld what was permitted to no other eyes. But why cannot the mother share in the Dionysiac festival, the nocturnal orgies of Bacchus? Educated under the stern rule of temperate Brahmins, this principle of continence would be alone sufficient to restrain her, where she not also withheld by that innate modesty which belongs to every child of nature.