Page:Sketches of some distinguished Indian women.djvu/102

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SOME DISTINGUISHED INDIAN WOMEN.

have English nurses and an English governess, and will, no doubt, become still more completely anglicized than their parents. The Maharani speaks and writes English perfectly, and shows a good deal of the facility for acquiring foreign ways so characteristic of the people of Bengal. She has not, indeed, shown any very striking talent nor remarkable intellectual ability, like some other Indian ladies, but if she is not destined to help her countrywomen in that particular way, her life may be as useful to them in others. Her quickness, her gracious manner, her ready tact, and her readiness to please and to be pleased, have gained her many warm friends among the English residents in India; and the fact that there is at least one Indian lady of high rank in whose house English men and women are cordially welcomed, cannot fail to be of great value in forwarding the development of that freer social intercourse between the two races, to which many people look as the surest and happiest way of solving the difficult problems that must be dealt with ere long in India.