Page:Hindu widow re-marriage and other tracts.djvu/15

 crimes arising from unchastity of widows will be obliterated by their re-marriage. The following remarks of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar a e appropriate here:—"An adequate idea of the intolerable hardships of early widow-hood can be formed by those only whose daughters, sisters, daughters-in-law and other female relatives have been deprived of their husbands during their infancy. How many hundreds of widows, unable to observe the austerities of a Brahmacharya life, betake themselves to prostitution and foeticide and thus bring disgrace upon the families of their fathers, mothers and husbands. If the marriage of widows be allowed, it will remove the insupportable torments of life-long widowhood, diminish the crimes of prostitution and foeticide and secure all families from disgrace and infamy. As long as this salutary practice will be deferred, so long will the crimes of prostitution, adultery, incest and faeticide flow on in