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to felicitate a friend, to welcome a superior or to celebrate a jubilee, to solemnise a wedding or to initiate a child into learning—aye, at times, to reverence a spiritual head or to honor a religious reviver, her song is the te deum of thankfulness, her dance the exhilaration of enthusiasm. The benediction at many an auspicious ceremony is of her chanting; the longevity of connubial life for many a hopeful bride is secured through the talismanic "black beads" of her stringing. In "temple processions" hers is the lead, while the graceless priest with his unheeded jargon is exiled to a safe distance.*[1] Famine stricken parents, albeit of high caste, may surrender to her custody and profession a child that a foreigner, however pure and respectable, may not apply for. In times of "legal" difficulties she may count upon the support of even some of the titled lead-
- ↑ * May it be reasonably hoped that the days are wholly gone when the carriages of the elite were her 'free conveyance,' and the wives of the fashionable were her "honorary maids"?
