Ruskin, is 'that it should show, first, that the designer of it had a
pretty fancy; next, that the maker of it had fine fingers; lastly, that
the wearer of it has worthiness or dignity enough to obtain what is
difficult to obtain, and common-sense enough not to wear it on all
occasions.'

* * * * *

The High-Caste Hindu Woman is an interesting book. It is from the pen of
the Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, and the introduction is written by Miss
Rachel Bodley, M.D., the Dean of the Woman's Medical College of
Pennsylvania. The story of the parentage of this learned lady is very
curious. A certain Hindu, being on a religious pilgrimage with his
family, which consisted of his wife and two daughters, one nine and the
other seven years of age, stopped in a town to rest for a day or two. One
morning the Hindu was bathing in the sacred river Godavari, near the
town, when he saw a fine-looking man coming there to bathe also. After
the ablution and the morning prayers were over, the father inquired of
the stranger who he was and whence he came. On learning his caste, and
clan, and dwelling-place, and also that he was a widower, he offered him
his little daughter of nine in marriage. All things were settled in an
hour or so; next day the marriage was concluded, and the little girl
placed in the possession of the stranger, who took her nearly nine
hundred miles away from her home, and gave her into the charge of his
mother. The stranger was the learned Ananta Shastri, a Brahman pundit,
who had very advanced views on the subject of woman's education, and he
determined that he would teach his girl-wife Sanskrit, and give her the
intellectual culture that had been always denied to women in India. Their
daughter was the Pundita Ramabai, who, after the death of her parents,
travelled all over India advocating the cause of female education, and to
whom seems to be due the first suggestion for the establishment of the
profession of women doctors. In 1866, Miss Mary Carpenter made a short
tour in India for the purpose of finding out some way by which women's
condition in that country might be improved. She at once discovered that
the chief means by which the desired end could be accomplished was by
furnishing women teachers for the Hindu Zenanas. She suggested that the
British Government should establish normal schools for training women
teachers, and that scholarships should be awarded to girls in order to
prolong their school-going period, and to assist indigent women who would
otherwise be unable to pursue their studies.

In response to Miss Carpenter's appeal, upon her return to England, the
English Government founded several schools for women in India, and a few
'Mary Carpenter Scholarships' were endowed by benevolent persons. These
schools were open to women of every caste; but while they have
undoubtedly been of use, they have not realised the hopes of their
founders, chiefly through the impossibility of keeping caste rules in
them. Ramabai, in a very eloquent chapter, proposes to solve the problem
in a different way.