Page:The Story of India (1897).djvu/14

x. that in those few cases their descendants never survive to the fourth generation.

There are two other ways in which a large majority of the natives, though not all, are unhappily united. They are poor, and they are ignorant. Their poverty is not that of people who make themselves miserable by always wanting something they cannot afford. It is the poverty of those who have just enough to keep body and soul together when all is going well. When the crops fail they must simply lie down and die of starvation unless their masters, the Government and the charitable British public, hasten to feed them. As for what we call education, or even the smattering of knowledge that we give in our elementary schools, not one native in twenty has yet received it. The other nineteen have what is worse than the mere absence of knowledge--they have superstition in the most burden-some quantities. Their lives are governed and hampered in many directions by ridiculous beliefs, their minds oppressed and disturbed by appalling suspicions. For instance--when the local authorities order a new bridge to be built, there is a common and firmly-fixed idea among the villagers that the white men kidnap native children and bury them under the foundations. The taking of a census gives rise to a belief that the Government is