Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/104

 important institutions would proceed more modestly, directly and ardently towards the object in view. But alas! what are our countrymen doing to arrest the destructive spread of that social pestilence which eats into the very marrow of a nation ? There are at least as many that pollute their bodies and ruin their souls by looseness of morals as those that are indifferent to physical exercise; and for every votary of Bacchus are there not, at the lowest computation, half a dozen sons of Belial in India ? In the very capitaj of the Empire, the number of those social upas-trees whom a shameless and culpable euphemism terms "dancing girls" is so alarmingly large, according to the latest census, as to call forth a national protest and wide- spread agitation in any civilised country. But here in India they that are deeply tainted in body and mind are given the sanction and shelter even of religion. Se- dentariness may be peculiar to those that "loom large" in their own eyes ; intemperance is, generally speaking, confined to