_Missionary in Mysore. Extracts from letter dated Seringapatam, 15th December, 1820._ "The authority of married women within their houses is chiefly exerted in preserving good order and peace among the persons who compose their families: and a great many among them discharge this important duty with a prudence and a discretion which have scarcely a parallel in Europe. I have known families composed of between thirty and forty persons, or more, consisting of grown-up sons and daughters, all married and all having children, living together under the superintendence of an old matron--their mother or mother-in-law. The latter, by good management, and by accommodating herself to the temper of the daughters-in-law, by using, according to circumstances, firmness or forbearance, succeeded in preserving peace and harmony during many years amongst so many females, who had all jarring interests, and still more jarring tempers. I ask you whether it would be possible to attain the same end, in the same circumstances, in our countries, where it is scarcely possible to make two women living under the same roof to agree together. "In fact, there is perhaps no kind of honest employment in a civilised country in which the Hindu females have not a due share. Besides the management of the household, and the care of the family, which (as already noticed) under their control, the wives and daughters of husbandmen attend and assist their husbands and fathers in the labours of agriculture. Those of tradesmen assist theirs in carrying on their trade. Merchants are attended and assisted by theirs in their shops. Many females are shopkeepers on their own account and _without a knowledge of the alphabet_ or of the decimal scale, they keep by other means their accounts in excellent order, and are considered as still shrewder than the males themselves in their commercial dealings." THE MODERN PRINTING WORKS, MOUNT ROAD, MADRAS. Books on Liberty and Freedom The Ideal of Swaraj. In Education and Government by Nirpendra Chandra Banerjee with an introduction by C. F. Andrews. Those who are out of sheer prejudice and incapacity for political thought, sneer, at the goal of Swaraj proclaimed by the National Congress as merely a destructive and at best a visionary ideal as well as those who in spite of their approval of the goal are unable to visualise it in concrete contents, will do well to read this interesting and instructive book by an ardent Bengali patriot and ex-school master. The author has political insight, and faith in the country's capacity. He recognises that the soul of India is in her numerous villages in rural centres and has given out practical suggestions for national reconstruction along sound lines.