All know the crowded Kalighat on the muddy little branch of the Ganges south of Calcutta. The little temple of the mother Kali stands close by, where Hindus keep up an animal sacrifice something similar to the classic and ancient Jewish rites. Many Europeans enjoy seeing the heads of the wretched little goats sliced off by a priest’s sword while the animals are still dripping from a plunge in the sacred tanks. Many, like myself, have gone with the crowding pilgrims on festival Sundays or weekday evenings and watched the people bathing in the turbid water, and the Brahmans seated in the open portico reading aloud the wanderings of Rama and breaking into song at the impassioned parts. Or we have stood at the narrow entrance till the door of the inmost shrine should open, allowing a glimpse of the goddess herself, the Bengal Mother, symbolic of the strange Force in nature, always moving irresistibly on its way with life and death, blessing and damnation in its hands. Blue-black she is, with three staring, scarlet eyes, one of them in her forehead. In her four arms she holds the signs of happiness and of destruction. One foot is planted on the body of a man, and from her mouth a golden tongue protrudes. Her worshippers tell that in her career of destruction through the universe, she was only stayed by the intervention of her husband Shiva, who in the semblance of a dead man flung himself before her feet to be trampled on. She is represented pausing in horror at the discovery. To put out the tongue is the common gesture of shame or horror among the Indian women, and if it seems a peculiar expression of those emotions, watch an English country servant whenever she drops a trayful of your best china on a stony floor, and she will almost invariably do the same. [Illustration: THE KALIGHAT.] [Illustration: PILGRIMS TO KALI. [_Face p. 206._ ]