Lighted to Lighten: the Hope of India Part 13

But what of the powers not released? What of the "mute, inglorious"

company of those who have had no chance to become articulate? There among the road-menders, going back and forth all day with a basket of crushed stone upon her head, toils a girl in whose hand G.o.d has hidden the cunning of the surgeon. No one suspects her powers, she least of all, and that undeveloped skill will die with her, undiscovered and unapplied. "To what purpose is this waste?"

Into your railway carriage comes the young wife of a rajah. Hidden by a canopy of crimson silk, she makes her aristocratic entrance concealed from the common gaze. Her life is spent within curtains. Yet she is the descendant of a Mughal ancestor who carried off and wedded a Rajput maiden. In her blood is the daring of Padmini, the executive power of Nur Jahan. With mind trained and exercised, she would be the administrative head of a woman's college. Again,--"To what purpose is this waste?"

Who dares to compute the sum total of lives wasted among the millions of India's women because undiscovered? Will American girls grudge their gifts to help in the discovery? Will American girls grudge the investment of their lives?

Only like souls I see the folk thereunder, Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be kings, Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder, Sadly contented with a show of things.

Then with a rush the intolerable craving s.h.i.+vers throughout me like a trumpet call; Oh, to save these! To perish for their saving, Die for their life, be offered for them all.

MYERS

THE END

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: A REPRESENTATIVE OF INDIA'S WOMANHOOD

Miss Lilavati Singh, M.A., Acting President of the Isabella Thoburn College, who died in Chicago in 1909 after thirty-one years of a.s.sociation with the college as teacher and pupil. A native of India, but a master of the English language, she was the first woman to sit on a world committee, having been president of the Woman's Section of the World Student Christian Federation. In this capacity she lectured in various countries of Western Europe and the United States.]