This was a measure of real good. You see girls now at play in
villages, where the face of one was never seen before, nor the voice
of one heard.'
'But still those who have them grumble, and say that the Government
which caused them to be preserved should undertake to provide for
their marriage. Is it not so?'
'At first they grumbled a little, sir; but as the infants grew on
their affections, they thought no more about it.'[16]
Gurcharan Baboo, the Principal of the little Jubbulpore College,[17]
called upon me one forenoon, soon after this conversation. He was
educated in the Calcutta College; speaks and writes English
exceedingly well; is tolerably well read in English literature, and
is decidedly a _thinking man_. After talking over the matter which
caused his visit, I told him of the Lodhi woman's burning herself
with the Brahman banker at Sihora, and asked him what he thought of
it. He said that 'In all probability this woman had really been the
wife of the Brahman in some former birth--of which transposition a
singular case had occurred in his own family.
'His great-grandfather had three wives, who all burnt themselves with
his body.
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