I put the girls first, as I always do. If we educate any let it be first the girl, for as the girl is, so will be the mother and the coming man. “A clever mother makes a clever man.” One might as well suppose a stream to rise above its source, as to expect a nation to rise above its mothers. An English writer says, “No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great statesman or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artists out of a nation of materialists; no great dramatist, except when the drama was the passion of the people.” And I will add, no great, good men without good mothers. Therefore, I say, educate the girls! Sometimes the whisper of a mother, in the ear of a child to-day, becomes the boom of a cannon a century hence. The people of India are utterly blind in this respect. No matter what else they do, they will never become a people among the great nations of the earth until they educate the women. I visited these schools often, gave the children treats, and offered prizes. I gave little lectures to little people, and being only “That Eurasian,” I had their language probably better than they could speak it themselves, so had no difficulty in reaching them. On the lecture prize days, the work in the fields was stopped, the gardens neglected, and the holiday clothes taken from the earthen jars. The people were all there, and not even a zanana woman or baba left behind. The walls of the little school-house were too near each other, so we had our School Jama’at under the big tree, with mats all around on the ground for the people to sit upon. The result in a few years—for I am looking back now—was that there was not a girl or boy in the villages but could read and write fairly well. They were eager to read, and begged for books and papers, so that I never made a visit that I did not carry out a supply to them. It was interesting, to me at least, to see frequently a little tot of a girl standing up and reading to a number of grown men. All the teaching was in their own language, of course, as I was not an enlightened fool enough to introduce English among them. I have always considered, and I do not speak from guess or supposition, but from what I know, that the zemindars, or village owners, are the greatest curse of India, unless they do something for their people, and not one out of a hundred, or even one in a thousand, does that. Next unto these zemindars is the army of brazen robbers, the jamadars, who collect the rents. They live on the villagers, while with them, and take all the dastoori and plunder they can lay their hands on. The poor people might better welcome a swarm of locusts than these plunderers. I never employed a jamadar to do my collecting, but went myself, and each ryot placed his money in my hands as I sat by a table under the big tree. All paid willingly, as they knew the exact amount, and that there would be no extortion.