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and eighty thousand Jews perished by the sword.

R. Akiba travelled far and wide previous to the breaking out of that insurrection to prepare the Jews for the struggle. He visited even Rome on that business. As his companions heard in the distance the noise of the great city, they were startled, and thought of the days of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. The rabbi consoled them with the remark, "If the wicked now prosper so much, how will it be by and by with the righteous?" "Everything that happens to you is for your good," was his constant expression, a say ing similar to that of the apostle in Rom. viii. 28, which has often been a consolation to the martyrs of the Church. “When evil befalls the heathen," said Akiba, "they curse their gods; but we praise our God both in prosperity and adversity, and cry, Praise be to the Judge of Truth!"

At Rome he met with a young, unmarried nobleman who had heard of his wisdom, but who noticed with astonishment that the rabbi was on foot and barefooted. "Art thou a Jewish rabbi?" asked the Roman. "I am," replied R. Akiba. "Then listen," said he, "to three words: a king rides upon horseback, a freeman on an ass, and a common person goes on foot with shoes; but he that hath neither the one nor the other, for him is the grave to be preferred." "Thou hast spoken three words," rejoined the rabbi; “now hear also three from me. The ornament of the face is the beard, the joy of the heart is the wife, and the dowry of the Eternal is children; woe to the man who has not these three! Moreover, I will answer thee from our Scripture: I have seen slaves upon horses, and princes like slaves walking upon the ground '(Eccles. x. 6. See "Midrash Koheleth," on that passage).

O Israel," with a loud voice, to the amazement of all present. "Art thou a sorcerer?" asked the Roman general who presided over the execution. "I am no sorcerer," was the calm reply of R. Akiba; "but I rejoice to fulfil that which has ever been regarded by me as the highest ideal: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and with all thy substance' that is, even if he should take away thy life." As he was dwelling on the word "the Lord thy God is ONE,' and prolonging the last syllable of the Hebrew word, his spirit winged its flight to that place where "the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest" (Job iii. 17).

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Our subject is not exhausted, nor have we given more than a few illustrations of what may be gathered from even an imperfect study of rabbinical literature.

CHARLES H. H. WRIGHT.

From The New Review. ENGLISHWOMEN IN INDIA. ANY one who is asked to write a description of civilized men or women in any given country will, likely enough, be reminded of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's remark, that she had never met but two sorts of people in the world - men and women.

What is the type of the Anglo-Indian lady? This is a problem that has been set me frequently, and when I have tried to answer I have felt daunted by the multiplicity of types that have sprung to my memory, and by the fear of appearing to judge or criticise where I have only been asked to describe, and, where I am chiefly concerned, to defend.

An Anglo-Indian woman is only a temR. Akiba threw his whole heart and soul porarily transplanted Englishwoman, and into the Jewish insurrection. He pro- only in so far as she is subject to special claimed the great Jewish commander, Bar conditions does she differ from the women Kokab, to be the promised Messiah. Re- of her own race and class anywhere else. ferring to the name of that commander, These conditions are, exile, enervating, which signified “son of a star,” R. Akiba | and often deadly climate; a society which exclaimed," Behold the star that is come out of Jacob; the days of redemption are at hand!" Akiba," said the peace-loving R. Joshua, "the grass will spring up from thy jaw-bone ere the Son of David will

come."

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The Romans put R. Akiba to death with the utmost torture. While they were combing off his flesh with iron combs the time of prayer arrived. The Jewish rabbi began to recite the Jewish formula, " Hear,

is in most places very small, never very large, and which is three-fourths military and one-fourth official; which contains a large preponderance of men over women, no old people, and no young ones between the ages of six and sixteen; which is recruited from the upper of our upper middleclasses at home, in which almost all enjoy a competence sufficient to meet the expenses of their position, but affording no margin for freedom of action, or the pur

suit of a wide choice of interests; a life of interruptions and publicity, of few domestic responsibilities, much solitude for the women, and peculiarly heavy responsibilities for the men.

in the widest sense), indeed, all Christian virtues, except, perhaps, humility. There is nothing specially Indian about her, except her long Indian experience, her pluck and hospitality. She is the nearest approach we ever get in India to the venerable in age, but she is not fifty, and soon her husband will retire on his hard-earned pension, and take her away to a semidetached villa at Bath or Cheltenham, and India will lose in her a restraint and a tradition.

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These are the conditions which are peculiar to India, but many characteristics of both the life and the people are common to all English provincial lives and people. Anglo-Indian society is provincial with officialism superadded, and has much in common with that of the English country town, especially the garrison town, whilst Then there is the gay and giddy lady, the hill-stations have a considerable dash the "cheery woman, who rests not day of the watering-place about them. It is or night organizing picnics, promoting my object to show that some of the less dances and theatricals, who mourns the attractive peculiarities of the English- inertia of her fellows if entertainments woman in India have nothing peculiarly flag even for a week, who frequents hillIndian about them. And whilst I must stations, but is not necessarily a grassown that in India a woman is more tempted widow. Her talk is much interlarded with to drift into idleness, inertia, local-mindedness, uncultured, gossipy lines of thought and speech, into pleasure-seeking and flirtation (I use the word advisedly as distinct from serious love-making), than she ever need be at home, yet the life has produced, and is producing, women of whom we have every reason to be proud, and whose qualities many women in England may do well to imitate.

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Anglo-Indian expressions, such as "tiffin," "chit," "pukka," "gup." Her children, if she has any, are at home. Before they went she most likely was a different woman much as Indian mothers always are, anxious, watchful, and worn, but they had to go, and she had to stay, and her pleasure-loving nature, without occupation or responsibility, finds its own consolation. There is no particular harm in the cheery Let us begin with the "Burra Memsa- woman; she is what is called "a useful hib." There is no adequate translation of sort of person to have in a station, because this name; the great lady" has too aris- she gets things up, you know," and there tocratic and feudal a sound about it; "the is some truth in the phrase in a country great official lady would be nearer the where all amusements are amateur, and mark. She is the wife of a member-in- must be self-constructed. There is always council, a commissioner, a judge, or a a lady of this type on a P. and O. steamer ; collector. There is something lovable, she has a fancy dress in the hold, and and yet awful, about her. She grasps an therefore insists on a fancy ball; she genornate card-case as her social oriflamme, erally knows one part in "Sweethearts the table of precedence is her Magna or "Ici on Parle Français," but as Mr. Charta, she is supremely virtuous, she Kipling would say, "that is another story," leads and judges the society in which she and must be written some day under the moves, her conversation is strictly local, head of "P. and O. passengers, a distinct practical, and personal. She has weathered race." What is there peculiarly Indian many dangers and hardships. She is a about this woman? I maintain nothing Conservative, and in theory her sympa- but her circumstances. Frivolity and thies are anti-native, but if you inquired pleasure-seeking are foibles of English as of her servants and others of her Aryan well as Indian growth. Indeed, the ordibrethren, you would hear how in more than nary “plains" station offers a starvation name she is "the protector of the poor." diet for such a nature, but in a hill-station, There is a touch of the patriarchal about or any large centre in "the season," there her household. In camp she shows a is an atmosphere of holiday-making, espegenius for "bundobust;"* in "the sta-cially among those who have escaped there tion" her dinner-parties are wearisome, but her hospitality unfailing. Her doors are ever open, her help ever ready for the sick, the bereaved, or simply the stranger. Her faults are pomposity and huffiness; her virtues hospitality, charity (not always

• Arrangement.

on a few weeks' leave, and the cheery woman finds many playmates and amusements for every day of the week.

Then there are the flirts, and will any one tell me they are the product of any particular country? They exist in India, no doubt, in a larger proportion than in England, but there is less demand for fe

male flirts here, owing to the surplus of women. In India women are in a minority, and therefore at a premium socially. It is a law of nature that whichever sex is in a minority in any society obtains an amount of attention, flattery, and homage from the other sex which results, among the lighterheaded, in a condition of things commonly known as being "spoilt." As an exemplification of this law we have only to look at London society, where the men are in a minority. Who that has travelled about the world, and seen men under the oppo. site condition, but will agree with me that the average English gentleman, of no special moral or intellectual power to lift him above the crowd, is a more chivalrousminded man after ten years in India than if he had remained in London at a false social premium. As London society is an abnormal test of a man's vanity, so is Anglo-Indian society of a woman's. At least, in India things are balanced, so that it is rare to see women "running after " men; the race is all the other way.

Before I pass on to describe the more usual form of Anglo-Indian flirt I wish to dwell on one point, that the real businesslike siren is rarer and in every way at a disadvantage in India. She is there no doubt. Her cigarette and patchouliscented drawing-room, with many screens and cunning corners, is "a room which precludes morality;" her roving eye and sinuous figure are alike the horror of the Burra Memsahib and the magnet to the subaltern; her facile good-nature makes her still beloved by some of her own sex, and her free talk is often the recreation of the statesman. But all the conditions of life in India are a restraint upon her. Cunning corners are hot to sit in, screens and curtains promote mosquitoes, servants glide to and fro with noiseless tread, the doors and windows are all open. Society is small and has many watch-dogs, headed by the Burra Memsahib. Climate forces the siren, as well as her victims, into the fresh air at the same hour, and generally along the same thoroughfare daily, as every one else; in fact, the siren finds herself continually before the public. In India all is public, and there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed. Altogether, I think my readers will agree that the determined, unscrupulous flirt is much happier, and therefore likely to be found in greater numbers, behind the screen of a more complex society than in an Indian station, which, in the matter of publicity, and censorious gossipiness, surpasses even the English country village.

No, the characteristic Anglo-Indian flirt is of a far milder sort. The motives that underlie her conduct are vanity and reaction from a monotonous and lonely existence, resulting in a craving for some excitement. Without wishing altogether to justify her motives or their consequences, I still assert that they are more excusable in India than elsewhere. Let us follow her career from the time she comes out as a raw girl fresh from a boarding-school.

No sooner does she set foot on a P. and O. steamer than she finds herself valued socially. Her rosy cheeks, redolent of English air, have a special charm to the homesick Anglo-Indians, whose finedrawn features and tanned complexions may be recognized as they come on board at the docks, or Brindisi. The girl is voted "so fresh and English-nothing Indian about her," and is flirted with as much as time and space will allow. When she lands in India, whether to remain in a large centre such as Bombay or Calcutta, or to go up to the ordinary station of the village-like proportions already mentioned, she finds the same thing, that, qud woman, in this society where males preponderate she has an amount of social success and attention that no girl in England without exceptional advantages of beauty, wit, or wealth, ever receives when she first comes out. It often happens that girls do not come out to India either with or to their own parents, or in any sense to a home, with its traditions, restraints, occupations, and responsibilities, but they come to some more distant relation, or to a friend who has invited them for the sake of their companionship, and to give them the "advantages" of a girl's life in India. Even if she do come to her parents, they are often half strangers to her. However much heartache and homesickness they may have had for their child during the long years of separation between furlough and furlough, yet nothing can bridge over those years, and make the understanding and intimacy between parent and child the same as in an English home. The latter takes her first plunge into life far away from the associations, the friends, the discipline, and traditions of her childhood, and gets her first impressions of the world amidst the trivial round of amusements and social gatherings with which AngloIndians keep up good-fellowship, and strive to while away their leisure hours in the "land of regrets." But to the girl, so far, it is a land of picnics, dances, and "gymkanas," where she finds herself pet

of sentimental friendships; to let her vanity be fed by the attentions and flattery of the surplus of subalterns and other unattached men, of whom in India there is always a supply. Like flirts all over the world, she deceives herself into thinking she is only giving sympathy when she is really accepting admiration and love, and once having begun to sip the cup of these moral stimulants, she finds it hard to do without them.

She is without two great restraints which act on most women who drift into the same line of conduct in England, viz.: first, the risk of paining and estranging her elders and contemporaries in her own family, whose criticism, once aroused, is

wide-eyed, silent criticism of her own girls and boys, who also by their mere existence take up her time, and draw her back to healthier interests.

ted and courted. She has her love affairs, | salt her savorless life by the excitements and after a year or two, varied by intervals at hill-stations, she selects a husband from the number of her suitors. Just as the stress of climate is beginning to fade her complexion and lower her energies she enters on the holy state. Then babies come, and whilst they are there it is rare for an Anglo-Indian mother, be she ever so uncultured and lonely, to be tempted back into the arena of flirtation. Mothers of Indian children are as a rule models of devotion to these little pale ghosts of English babyhood, whose graves occupy such large corners of our Indian cemeteries. To save them from such an end, the mother has often to spend one-third of the year in the hills away from her husband, and sometimes she has to fly sud-apt to be plainly expressed; second, the denly with them as fast as train and ship can carry her, over "the black, dividing sea," back to her old home in England. There, after a year or so, she leaves them, and goes back to the old life, to emptiness, monotony, and, for the greater part of the day, solitude, her husband being in office all day. But towards sundown the old social gatherings go on - how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable they seem to her now! An Englishwoman in India once said bitterly to me, "If a woman becomes perfectly contented in India it is a sign she has deteriorated." This is much too general and sweeping an assertion, but as applied to life in an ordinary Indian station there is some truth in it. The woman who can drown homesickness, keep her health, and who has sufficient resources within herself to be happy any where, is happy in India, but such women are exceptions all over the world. To the average woman, who is more or less dependent upon her circumstances, the consolations and distractions of station life are, to say the least, inadequate. The weekly gymkana, the more frequent polo, the daily gathering between 6 and 7.30 P.M. at the general meeting place, “the Club," a building consisting of a billiard-room and a library, with lawn-tennis grounds outside, where the craving for companion- The existence of this belief that Enship drives the few English people to col-glishwomen in India are all flirts, fostered lect, talk "shop," and gossip, to read the by Mr. Kipling's masterly sketches of papers with flagging interest, and borrow books from the indifferent library, - these gatherings, varied by an occasional dance or picnic, can do little to fill the gaps in Indian life, and they leave the average woman fairly homesick for life in England.

The typical Anglo-Indian flirt is simply she who succumbs to the temptation to

I have no wish to justify this typical flirt; I only wish to show that whilst her temptations are abnormal and Indian, her nature and her follies are merely human. The unwritten laws of Indian society allow her to ride, drive, and walk with men. Women, both married and single, are almost obliged to go to balls and dance; they are dubbed airified and unobligg if they do not do so, women being in demand socially; thus there is endless propinquity, always more or less in public, yet admitting of the sentimental tête-à-tête. There is an Arcadian simplicity, a naïve love of display about the Indian flirt, something disarming and comic about the way she gallops, drives, and dances her admirers up and down before the eyes of her small world -eyes that have so little to occupy them. It is this continual observation, and the inevitable discussion following upon it that have given rise to the impression that there is so much flirtation in India. There is a good deal of it, for the reasons already given, but no sign of it in its mildest or its acuter form escapes observation.

Mrs. Hauksbee and others of the more vulgar of this class, blending as he does with such absolute truth their vulgarity with their own peculiar pathos, - this must be my excuse for dwelling so long on this small percentage of the Englishwoman in India.

Of the types already described the last two are characteristic of the many small

military stations, and the hill-stations, but the district life in tents, or in places where there are no soldiers, is the most characteristically Anglo-Indian. In such places has of late years come into existence the sporting lady. These are generally wives of district officers, either in the revenue, forest, police, or public works departments, who have to live in places where, perhaps, they, and one subordinate officer, and a half-caste apothecary form the only "European" population. These spend their winters pleasantly enough travelling about in tents. They rise about 6 or 6.30 A.M., and ride on to the next camping ground, where they find duplicate tents already pitched. On the way the husband shoots, the ordinary game being blackbuck, wild duck, snipe, or quail. By ten at latest they are in camp, breakfast, and the husband sets to work in his office-tent, transacting the business of local administration. He therefore has the double interest of his work and his sport, whilst the wife's chief occupation is the bundobust of the camp. If she has children they are a considerable anxiety. They travel in a bullock "dumny" daily the same distance as their parents ride. Towards sundown, if he has time, the husband shoots again. It can easily be understood that if the wife can take an active share in his sport the monotony of her life will be much relieved. I remember once arriving late one evening during "the rains" at an out-of-the-way place in the Deccan, to go on the next morning. We had expected to eat the inevitable tough chicken in the traveller's bungalow, and to share our night's rest with bats, toads, fleas, etc. But the ever alert hospitality of India, in the shape of the local superintendent of police, found us out at once, and transplanted us to his cool and comfortable bungalow, where his wife most kindly received us in her pretty drawing room, of which the least usual adornment was a row of fine black-buck heads hung round the wall. N. remarked on them with the envy of a fellow-sportsman, and we were astonished to find that they had all been shot by our hostess, a pretty, delicate-looking little woman. She then showed us a photograph of herself in her "shikar "suit - a loose Norfolk jacket, short petticoat, and gaiters (as a protection against snakes), a huge pith sun-hat, and a wadded pad down her back as a protection from the sun. She spoke with feeling of the monotony of her life until she took to shooting with her husband. One other lady, the wife of a collector, I met in the Kanara VOL. LXXIX. 4068

LIVING AGE.

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forest, in the south of the Bombay presidency, where the shooting is done from trees. She was then elated at having shot her first head of big game, a hyena, but I have since heard that she has shot tigers, big sambur, panther, bear, and black-buck, everything, in fact, except elephant and bison. Such spirited reaction from the inertia to which the climate and life make many women victims, must disarm criticism.

But these types that I have described still include but a percentage of the rank and file of Anglo-Indian ladies, who, when I begin to think of them, present to me an array of white faces on which endurance is plainly written. There is an impression of faded, old-fashioned refinement about them; their conversation drifts into discussing the comparative merits of the various places where they have been stationed, how much or how little ill-health their husbands, their children, or they themselves have had there. Often they sound a note of cheerful gratitude for the place they are in, because it has the advantages of some "European "society, an English doctor, or the power of escaping by road or rail to the hills, or Bombay, Calcutta, or Madras, in case of obstinate fever or other illness. They talk of when they were last in England, and speak with sudden animation of the delights of that time, or of how "next hot-weather," or "the hot-weather after next," they hope to go home again.

Their uncomplainingness is marvellous, their pluck undefeated, their hospitality and kindness to each other, to any passing globe-trotter, or other stranger, unfailing. These qualities of large-hearted kindness and hospitality are characteristic of all Anglo-Indians; the Burra Memsahib excels in them, the siren, the cheery woman, and the flirt are not behindhand in them. And when I speak of hospitality I do not mean the giving of entertainments. I mean hospitality that makes people turn out of their more comfortable rooms to give them up to a stranger, that takes in a sick acquaintance, nurses him night and day, feeds him on the best beef-tea, milk, and champagne that can be managed, writes home to his friends accounts of his progress, or details of his death; the kind. ness that makes people go at once to a house where there is illness, and offer to take a share of the nursing. At ordinary times, Anglo-Indian society presents examples of petty gossip, self-asserting huf finess, and undignified flirtation; but the very women who will one day meet each

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