Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/146

 to see a magic-lantern exhibition, needed seats, and I was privileged to be the first among those who offered to give up their own chairs for the ladies. On another occasion, the opportunity for such service came to me when my second-class ticket was made over to an Anglo-Indian lady in exchange for her third-class ticket during a railway journey in midsummer. Again, when some boatmen on the Buckingham Canal at Bezwada were seen cutting vile jokes with a poor woman who appeared to have lost 'caste' as a respectable person, I asked her what the matter was, addressing her as amma (mother). Then she looked up with a gleam in her eyes, as if to say, 'Is there one in this world who feels any regard for this unfortunate woman ?' On yet another occasion, a young woman selling butter-milk on a railway platform expressed herself in simple heart-felt thankfulness with the words, 'Aye, Babu, teach them a lesson that way,' pointing to those whom I had gently rebuked for presuming to flirt with