A HINDU MOTHER AND HER BABY GIRL.
“One evening,” a lady missionary says, “I was waiting for my husband outside our tent, when a young and handsome Hindu woman was brought along between two policemen, caught in the act of attempting to destroy her child. She had it in her arms—a poor little thing that had evidently been starved and neglected without love or care. My heart went out to the little mite, and I said to the mother, ‘Will you let me hold the baby for you?’ She almost threw it at me, not appearing to care in the least who had it, or what became of it. I took it into the tent and washed it, put some fresh clothes on it, and gave it something to eat. When I brought it out she seemed very much surprised, and said, ‘Why have you done all this for my child? If you, a stranger, think it worthy of such love and care, what ought I, its mother, to feel toward it? Give it to me; she shall never know want or wretchedness again,’ and she clasped the little thing to her bosom, and pressed her lips on its tiny face, while a tear trickled down her cheeks, as if she was ashamed that she had been such a cruel mother to it. My husband told me afterward that by my kindness to that child I had done more to check the crime of child murder in the district than all the laws which had been passed to prevent it, but which were being set at nought daily.”—Selected.