Fiction

Missionary Vignettes

THEY form a -restive trilogy, Mother India, Father

India, and Daughters of India'; an arresting challenge, an angry and ineffective rejoinder, and now some balm on an unpleasant controversy.' To Miss Wilson our gratitude. is due for the balm, and also for a vivid and attractive little book. There is not a page of .politics in it, not a word of propaganda ; the most sensitive of Indian nationalists could not place the author in any conspiracy for insulting India, or prejudicing the Simon Commission, or similar malevolence. She has just sat down and sketched some of India's woman-

kind.as they.are_ seen by a kindly American woman missionary with-a sense of -pathos - and -a-seasoning of humour. On its jacket the book is called a novel ; but it has neither plot nor

moral. It is a slice of days—one or two months at the outside —cut out of the life of- a small Indian Christian settlement

in the Punjab, It is told_ with a . certain delicate grace of thought and style; and 'it contains at least halt-a-dozen vignettes_ which are photographically true to life. , ?rake, _f the description of the Bengali school- mistregsfsinigalow, with its front of " :Anglo-American

Meorishi'? and Its high-walled courtyard behind

That: anizitYard, shaded by a mango tree, littered with brass cooking vesselstiearthen water-pots, stools, beds and examination papers, wai,"for the most of Ile year, the kitchen, the dining-room, the and bedrooni for Miss Bhose's tribe. The five riiarriages:°:of,fier -4ther had provided her with many brothers and sisters---WhalaiAntlf,- -or -even lesser. Some of them by this time hid' lost their =husbands, -'some their wives, some their jobs, and some their health and reputation. But; to judge -from that courtyard,-:none.- of :them )-4ad over lost any children."

Another- passage which: in its way is perfect is -the account of

the village women's-hospitality, the tumbler of scorched buffalo milk, with two inches of coarse broWn sugar at the

bottom of the vessel, which they press on the visitor whont

they desire to honour. As a counterpoise, the picture of a enon-stop village quarrel will awaken equally lasting memories in some of us. There is much artless art in this book, and nothing conventional.

As a contribution to the discussion which started with Miss Mayo's bombshell, the story makes no direct claim. Its :canvas is too narrow for such a role, its heroines too humble. "They are almost all drawn from the lowest stratum of Indian life, the scavengers and skinners who flock into Christianity because it recognizes that they are human, and Hinduism does not. Downtrodden and maltreated though these out- _rakes have been for centuries, Miss Wilson finds much in them that is lovable, especially among their women. They have their lapses and their incredible superstitions, but to ;their simple virtues and their warm and affectionate hearts the :book is a tribute ; as such, it may help to heal some recent -sores. - But of the social system, and of woman's position in.

It there is much to be read between the lines. " Women in .

that village," says Miss Wilson almost in a parenthesis, " were not interested in the mention of possible exotic and alluring sins which charm western dilettanti. There was nothing left exotic to them." Again, in lamenting the early marriages of 'pupils at her girls' school, she reflects " that her cooped-up, veiled, enervated little pupils were less ready physically for :inotherhood than the average tomboy of an English or Anierican thirteen-year-old. Emotionally to be sure they Were more ready, since the ultimate functioning of their bodies had been kept in their minds every minute of their life from infancy upwards." None of this is set down in malice ; it is the ripe judgment of one who knows India from within, and loves her people. In putting right the much that In this respect is wrong, India will surely not reject the help which friends like Miss Wilson can give her.

MESTON.