It is a lamentable fact that though a Hindoo bears a great love and affection to his wife while she lives, yet in the event of her death, the effects of these amiable qualities are too soon effaced by the strong influence of a new passion, and another union is very speedily formed. Even during the period of his mourning, which lasts one month, proposals for a second marriage are entertained, if not by the husband himself, by his father or elder brother. When the remembrance of this heavy domestic bereavement is so very fresh in the memory, it is highly unbecoming and ungenerous to open or enter into a matrimonial negotiation, and have it consummated immediately after the _asuchi_ or mourning is over. A wife is certainly not a beast of burden that is no sooner removed by death than it may be replaced by another. She is a being whose joy and sorrow, happiness and misery, should be identical with her husband's, and he is a savage in the widest sense of the word who does not cherish a sacred regard for her memory after her death. In regard to the whole conduct and relations of the married life, Hindoos cannot have the golden rule too strongly impressed: "Let every one of you in particular so love his wife, even as himself; and let the wife see that she reverence her husband." FOOTNOTES: [15] I may be permitted here to observe _en passant_ that a civilized nation in describing the beauty of a woman, is sometimes apt to adopt the flowery language of Hafiz. At a Ministerial banquet sometime ago, the Lord Mayor of London was reported to have said about the Princess of Wales; "she is perfection, she sparkles like a gem of fifty facets, she is light when she smiles and she is beauty whenever you see her." [16] Presents of sweetmeats, fruits, clothes, flowers and sundry other articles on a pretty grand scale from the bride to the bridegroom, which will be described more in detail afterwards. [17] A Rajpoot prince was said to have given a lakh of Rupees to a bard in order to purchase his rhythmic plaudits in a respectable assemblage of his countrymen. [18] If we consult properly the pages of the history of this country from the earliest period, we shall find abundant proofs of the very great influence of women on Hindoo society in general. I cannot do better than give the following quotation from Tod's Annals of Rajasthan. "What led to the wars of Rama? The rape of Sita. What rendered deadly the feuds of the Yadus? The insult of Dropadi. What made prince Nala an exile from Nirwar? His love for Damayanti. What made Raja Bharti abandon the throne of Avanti? The loss of Pingala. What subjected the Hindu to the dominion of the Islamite? The rape of the princess of Canouj. In fine, the cause which overturned kingdoms, commuted the sceptre to the pilgrim's staff and formed the ground-work of all their grand epics, is woman."