The Hindoos are averse to female education, and suffer their daughters to live in entire ignorance. The popular belief among Hindoo women is, that, if a girl should learn to read and write, she would be a widow. The widowhood in Bengal is the saddest part of female life, and its consequent sufferings are such as have caused millions to prefer death, by being burnt alive on the funeral pile of the husband. But experience has falsified the idea in a measure. Here and there one out of ten thousand of women knows how to read a little, and enjoys connubial life. There are other difficulties to be considered and removed which prove strong obstacles to the education of the females in Bengal. The Hindoo women have no free intercourse in speech with other men beside their husbands, father, and brothers; their faces are covered with thick veils immediately after the marriage, and from that time they are not allowed to walk out of the house. Unless these customs are rooted up, there is no hope at all for the regeneration of the female in Bengal. As I compare a woman in Bengal with one in America or England, I see plainly the difference between Christianity and Hindooism. Nothing but the divine influence of Christianity has ennobled the female condition in Christendom. May the Christian women be ever grateful to God for his peculiar blessings unto them, and pray for the rescue of their sisters in the bondage of ignorance in heathen lands! CHAPTER IV. THE SECOND BIRTH.--BRAHMUN CONSECRATED THREAD.--DISCIPLINE AND PRIVILEGES OF THE BRAHMUN’S LIFE.