It is the women who are compelling the younger boys and girls to conform to the old usages and traditions in regard to marriage. Many a boy leaves school and would like a chance to find a place for himself in life before burdening himself with a wife. But this he is not allowed to do. His mother believes that all boys should be married early in life, consequently the boy is saddled with a family at about the age when the American boy is taking his first shy look at the girl across the aisle in the schoolroom. These modern young men would also like to have a voice in the selection of their wives, but that also is denied them. They must conform to the traditions of their caste and the customs of their family. I know a boy who was compelled to marry his niece, although his education had taught him that these intermarriages were not for the good of his race; still, he was helpless, and could not successfully oppose the combined wishes of the women of his family. Side by side with these Indian women who guard jealously the customs and traditions of other days are the Westernized society women, who seem to share with their husbands in the spirit of imitation that has entered into the very soul of the Indian people who have come into contact with the English. The Indian gentleman feels that he must talk “sport,” the schoolboy prides himself upon the knowledge of cricket and football and talks the jargon of Eton and Rugby. Because the meat-eating Englishmen from cold, dreary England must exercise in order to live, the Indian also devotes himself to a strenuous regime that is absolutely alien to his habits and the requirements of his climate. The Indian lady, with her exaggerated English accent, and her costume that is neither of the East nor of the West, is a paradox. She may well be zealous in borrowing what she needs from the English, but it seems hard for her to assimilate what she takes and make it a part of herself. The affectations which she uses to show her cosmopolitanism are palpably grafted upon her tree of knowledge, and we who wish to see the real India are only consoled in the thought that these unusual conditions which prevail in the large cities are only the graftings, and that the tree itself is not affected by them. The real woman of India is bound to grow in knowledge brought by education and experience, but deep down in her heart she will be essentially the same for years to come. She will not try to exchange her personality for another’s, even in outward appearance. The dawn of consciousness that has been preceded by long twilight is now awakening in the soul of the Eastern woman, and she will see by its light that she has a strength and individuality of her own and that she need not mortgage her birthright to borrow alien charms from the women of other lands. CHAPTER VII MARRIAGE—THE GOAL OF WOMAN