equipped and poorly taught; countless Aruls—feeling within them dim gropings, half-formed ambitions. Somewhere in America there are girls trained in rural education and longing for the chance for research and original work in a big, untried field. What a chance for getting together the girl and the task!

[Illustration: THE SORT OF HOME THAT ARUL KNEW IN THE VILLAGE OF SEVEN
PALMS]

A HIGH SCHOOL

Where the Girls Come from.

If the girls of India could pass you in long procession, you would need to count up to one hundred before you found one who had had Arul's opportunity of learning just to read and write. Infinitely smaller is the proportion of those who go into secondary schools. American women have been responsible for founding, financing, and teaching many of the Girls' High Schools that exist. They are of various sorts. Some have new and up-to-date plants, modelled on satisfactory types of American buildings. Others are muddling along with old-time, out-grown schoolrooms, spilling over into thatched sheds, and longing for the day when the spiritual structure they are erecting will be expressed in a suitable material form. Schools vary also as to social standing, discipline, and ideals; yet there are common features and problems, and one may be more or less typical of all. Most include under one organization everything from kindergarten to senior high school, so that the school is really a big family of one or two or four hundred, as the case may be.

The girls come from many grades of Indian life. The great majority are Christians, for few Hindu parents are yet sufficiently "advanced" to desire a high school education for their daughters, and those who do usually send their girls to a Government school where caste regulations will be observed and where there will be no religious teaching.

Some of the Christian girls come from origins as crude as that of Arul. To such the simplest elements of hygiene are unknown, and cleanly and decent living is the first and hardest lesson to be learned. Others are orphans, waifs, and strays cast up from the currents of village life. Uncared for, undernourished, with memories of a tragic childhood behind them, it is sometimes an impossible task to turn these little, old women back into normal children. But the largest number are children of teachers and catechists, pastors, and even college professors, who come from middle class homes, with a greater or less collection of Christian habits and ideals. With all these is a small scattering of high caste Hindu girls, the children of exceptionally liberal parents. The resulting school community is a wonderful example of pure democracy. Ignorant village girls learn more from the "public opinion" of their better trained schoolmates than from any amount of formal discipline; while daughters of educated families share their inheritance and come to realize a little of the need of India's illiterate masses. So school life becomes an experiment in Christian democracy, where a girl counts only for what she can do and be; where each member contributes something to the life of the group and receives something from it.

What the Girls Study.

Schools are schools the world over, and the agonies of the three R's are common to children in whatever tongue they learn. An Indian kindergarten is not so different from an American, except for language and local color. Equipment is far simpler and less expensive, but there is the same spontaneity, the same joy of living; laughter and play have the same sound in Tamil as in English. Besides, Indian kindergartens produce some charming materials all their own—shiny black tamarind seeds, piles of colored rice, and palm leaves that braid into baby rattles and fans.

So, too, a high school course is much the same even in India. The right-angled triangle still has an hypotenuse, and quadratics do not simplify with distance, while Tamil classics throw Vergil and Cicero into the shade. The fact that high school work is all carried on in English is the biggest stumbling block in the Indian schoolgirl's road to learning. What would the American girl think of going through a history recitation in Russian, writing chemistry equations in French, or demonstrating a geometry proposition in Spanish? Some day Indian education may be conducted in its own vernaculars; to-day there are neither the necessary text-books, nor the vocabulary to express scientific thought. As yet, and probably for many years to come, the English language is the key that unlocks the House of Learning to the schoolgirl. Indian classics she has and they are well worth knowing; but even Shakespeare and Milton would hardly console the American girl for the loss of all her story books, from "Little Women" and "Pollyanna" up—or down—to the modern novel. To understand English sufficiently to write and speak and even think in it is the big job of the High School. It is only the picked few who attain unto it; those few are possessed of brains and perseverance enough to become the leaders of the next generation.

School Life.

It is not unusual for an Indian girl to spend ten or twelve years in such a boarding school. An institution is a poor substitute for a home, but in such cases it must do its best to combine the two. This means that books are almost accessories; school life is the most vital part of education.

To such efforts the Indian girl responds almost incredibly. Whatever her faults—and she has many—she is never bored. Her own background is so narrow that school opens to her a new world of surprise. "Isn't it wonderful!" is the constant reaction to the commonplaces of science. No less wonderful to her is the liberty of thinking and acting for herself that self-government brings.

Seeta loves her home, but before a month is over its close confinement palls and she writes back, "I am living like a Muhammadan woman. I wish it were the last day of vacation." Her father is shocked by her desire to be up and doing. He calls on the school principal and complains, "I don't know what to make of my daughter. Why is she not like her mother? Are not cooking and sewing enough for any woman? Why has she these strange ideas about doing all sorts of things that her mother never wanted to do?" Then the principal tries to explain patiently that new wine cannot be kept in old bottles, and that unless the daughter were to he different from the mother it was hardly worth while to send her for secondary education. So, when the long holiday is over, Seeta returns with a fresh appreciation of what education means in her life; and we know that when her daughters come home for vacation, it will be to a mother with sympathy and understanding.

The girls' loyalty to their school is at times almost pathetic. An American teacher writes, "One moonlight night when I was walking about the grounds talking with some of the oldest girls, one of them caught my hand, and turned me about toward the school, which, even under the magic of the Indian moon, did not seem a particularly beautiful sight to me. 'Amma' (mother), she said, in a voice quivering with emotion, 'See how beautiful our school is! When I stand out here at night and look at it through the trees, it gives me such a feeling here,' and she pressed her hand over her heart.

"'Do you think it is only beautiful at night?' one of the other girls asked indignantly, and all joined in enthusiastic affirmations of its attractions even at high noon,—which all goes to show how relative the matter is. I, with my background of Wellesley lawns and architecture, find our school a hopelessly unsanitary makeshift to be endured patiently for a few years longer, but to these girls with their background of wretchedly