VILLAGE SCHOOLS AND SCHOLARS IN INDIA.
By E. P. Holton
THE school building is generally built of mud, that becomes dry and hard. The roof is covered with palmyra palm leaves upon rafters tied together with cactus leaf fiber. Teacher and scholars sit upon palmyra-leaf mats. The blackboard is usually a smoothed portion of the mud wall, covered with tar. On the floor are heaps of sand, which are made smooth, and in which the teachers and younger scholars write letters and words. Some of the older pupils have books and slates. When the boys come trooping out of school, they will frequently be on the run, with their slates and books on their heads. The first time I saw the little girls running, I wondered why they ran with both hands up to their ears—a most awkward and inconvenient sort of gait, as any one can readily find out by trying it, or even by watching it a moment. When they stopped running, I at once guessed the reason of their so holding onto their ears. At an early age the little girl babies' ears are pierced, and rolls of cloth or rings of palmyra leaf are put in to distend the lower, pendant portion of the ear until it has grown into a large loop, the flesh being in no place more than an eighth of an inch in thickness. Large lead rings of half or three-quarters of an ounce weight are bent on, sometimes three or four into one loop, until they drag down to and rest on her collar-bone. Now, were the small girl to run free-handed like her brother, her flying earrings would give her a "tunk" in the eye but little short of a slung shot in effectiveness. The ears are the one sure way to tell the girls from the boys in a village school. The boys are almost always shaven as to their heads, all save a little tuft of varying extent and shape on top. But sometimes you will notice a small boy with long hair parted in the middle, and combed like his sister's. You will be told on inquiry that, all his little brothers having died, his parents are trying to disguise his sex from the avenging family deity. For the same reason, pet or pretty names are discarded at times, and mean, poor names are used, so as not to attract the jealousy of the "swamies." The village school, like the old New England "district school," does not flourish in harvest time, or whenever there is the least hope of gaining anything from the child's time. Indeed, after a boy has become old enough to herd goats and cattle, the chances of getting him out of a Hindu home and into the village school are very small. The same is much more true of the girls, as there is usually great prejudice against their learning to read, especially in the little villages, which make up about eighty-five per cent. of the population of India. Of the children's raiment but little need be said—a very dark skin, often a very soiled one too, with a single garment of (once) white cloth tied around the waist, in the case of boys; a much longer one, very prettily and gracefully draped over one shoulder and around the waist, in the case of the girls. Of course no head or foot gear is worn.—E. P. Holton.