“He imagines the great tribe of the Smiths throughout Great Britain bound together in a community, and recognizing as their cardinal doctrine that a Smith must always marry a Smith, and could by no possibility marry a Brown, a Jones, or a Robinson. This seems fairly simple; there would be quite enough Miss Smiths to go round. But, then, note that the Smith horde would be broken up into smaller clans, each fiercely endogamous. Brewing Smiths,” Sir H. Risley asks us to observe, “must not mate with baking Smiths; shooting Smiths and hunting Smiths, temperance Smiths and licensed-victualler Smiths, Free Trade Smiths and Tariff Reform Smiths, must seek partners for life in their own particular section of the Smithian multitude. The Unionist Smith would not lead a Home Rule damsel to the altar, nor should Smith the tailor wed the daughter of a Smith who sold boots.” In its effect upon women the caste system has been most deleterious because of the difficulty of finding husbands within the same caste. It has led to the making away with undesirable daughters, which was frequently practised by the parents before the English Government stepped in and made female infanticide a crime and severely punished the culprits. Yet we are told that the disproportion of female to male children shows that the practice has not been completely stamped out, and that many fathers foreseeing the financial difficulties to be encountered in marrying their daughters, have deliberately made away with them at birth. In the smaller villages the crime is difficult of detection, but when the ratio of girls to boys falls particularly low in a community, the Government quarters extra police upon the people, making all the inhabitants contribute towards the cost of their maintenance, and the records soon show that girl babies are again being born in the villages. Life in a high-caste Brahman family is much more complicated than that of the low-caste family, and many burdens are added to the already heavy ones borne by the Hindu woman, because of the rituals and customs woven around this caste system. A woman told me that she had a friend who lived in the house of two maiden aunts who were most orthodox Hindus. This woman was not allowed to touch a thing in the morning before her bath. Beside her bed was a long pole with which she must handle her towels and clothing, and she was not permitted to enter the presence of her aunts until her uncleanliness had been removed by ablutions and prayers.