"But of course the law interferes!" Perhaps you have heard of the law which makes wifehood illegal under twelve. With reference to this law the Hon. Manomoham Ghose of the High Court of Calcutta writes:--"If the Government thinks that the country is not yet prepared for such legislation" (by which he means drastic legislation) "as I suggest, I can only express my regret that by introducing the present Bill it has indefinitely postponed the introduction of a substantial measure of reform, which is urgently called for." There are men and women in India to whom many a day is a nightmare, and this fair land an Inferno, because of what they know of the wrong that is going on. For that is the dreadful part of it. It is not like the burning alive of the widows, it is not a horror passed. It is going on steadily day and night. Sunlight, moonlight, and darkness pass, the one changing into the other; but all the time they are passing, this Wrong holds the hours with firm and strong hands, and uses them for its purpose--the murder of little girls. Meanwhile, what can be done by you and by me to hasten the day of its ending? Those who know can tell what they know, or so much as will bear the telling; and those who do not know can believe it is true, and if they have influence anywhere, use it; and all can care and pray! Praying alone is not enough, but oh for more real praying! We are playing at praying, and caring, and coming; playing at doing--if doing costs--playing at everything but play. We are earnest enough about that. God open our eyes and convict us of our insincerity! burn out the superficial in us, make us intensely in earnest! And may God quicken our sympathy, and touch our heart, and nerve our arm for what will prove a desperate fight against "leaguèd fiends" in bad men's shapes, who do the devil's work to-day, branding on little innocent souls the very brand of hell. I have told of one--that little child who is now as evil-minded as a little child can be; she is only one of so many. Let a medical missionary speak. "A few days ago we had a little child-wife here as a patient. She was ten or eleven, I think, just a scrap of a creature, playing with a doll, and yet degraded unmentionably in mind. . . . But oh, to think of the hundreds of little girls! . . . It makes me feel literally sick. We do what we can. . . . But what can we do? What a drop in the ocean it is!" Where the dotted lines come, there was written what cannot be printed. But it had to be lived through, every bit of it, by a "scrap of a creature of ten or eleven." Another--these are from a friend who, even in writing a private letter, cannot say one-tenth of the thing she really means. "A few days ago the little mother (a child of thirteen) was crying bitterly in the ward. 'Why are you crying?' 'Because he says I am too old for him now; he will get another wife, he says.' 'He' was her husband, 'quite a lad,' who had come to the hospital to see her."