doomed; her life is a steadfast battle against misery, her soul soars in a vacuum where all is unreal, empty and hollow, and all the sweet enjoyments of life fall flat on her taste. Her mental strife is never over. She is like a weary swimmer who throws himself back and floats, because he is too much exhausted to swim longer, yet will not sink and let the cold and merciless water close over his head. Her spirit has broken wildly loose from its normal attitude, and her mind is overwhelmed in a surging tide of misery. From the day she loses her husband, she has a new lease of life, and a miserable lease it must be. She will not cease to lament until her soul itself shall die. If she could say, joy was once her portion, it lighted on her as the bird rests on the tree in passing and takes wing, yet she would now say, her existence is so unlife-like that to her death is sweet. She is a poor fallen outcast of humanity. No one can enter into her feelings and views of things. She has no influence, no control over herself, she cannot turn over a new leaf within her own mind. Though society is almost a necessity of our existence, yet she lives wholly alone; a cheerless train of thoughts always haunts her mind, she feels a dismal void in her heart, she finds herself cut off at once and for ever from one most dear to her, no conversation, however pleasant, can bring her consolation or cheat her grief. The tide of settled melancholy threatens her reason. As an outcast, she is religiously forbidden to take a part in any of the social and domestic concerns of life, tending to relieve the ennui of a wearisome existence, and to enliven the mind for a while. She is a living example of an angel sent by heaven to minister to the comforts of man, turned by a cruel institution into a curse. Estranged from the affection of those who are, by the ties of consanguinity, nearest and dearest to her, she passes her days like a recluse, quite apart from the communion of society. She stares and gazes wildly at every festive celebration, while, as the poet sings, "The glad circle round them yield their souls To festive mirth and wit that knows no gall." If she have longings irrepressible and cravings insatiable to lend her hand to any _shoova karma_ (meritorious work), her widowed condition interposes an insurmountable barrier to her participation therein, as if everything would be desecrated when touched by her polluted hand.