The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1924, Page 61

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

The Lutheran Pioneer. 61
e6u8ue_qC3cNwqu}09”#?#®@*wyowqo>T —ou@=$snmyuqmmmeee oO

where cruel treatment at his hands, heartless mock-
ings of the elderly women of the Hindu household,
will be her daily meat. In vain she there looks for
sympathy and help, in vain she longs for relief, for
once a child-wife leaves her parents’ home, she can
never go back again. ‘The laws of custom and caste
make her the inmate of her husband’s home for life.
Read a few experiences related by a missionary

» worker in India: -— :
“Sitting on the veranda one evening after sup-
per, I noticed a pleasant-faced-looking old man
come up and walk toward the house. He hesitated
to come forward and went to one of the lads and
said that he would like to talk with me. THe came
forward, and I could see that beneath the pleasant
smile there was a great sorrow weighing on his

Class of Catechumens, Mount Zion, New Orleans.

heart. It was not long till he unburdened his heart
and told the pitiful story that many a father and
mother has poured out into the ears of their mis-
sionary friends. His daughter had been married
two years, and to a man who was, to say the least,
cruelty personified. Both he and his mother would
beat her unmercifully and tie her down to the bed
and lash her. ‘They expected that little child-wife
‘to be able to do everything and demanded it of her.
I tried hard to see the man, but he always evaded me.
I sent word to him, however, that I had come to
know of the ill treatment that he and his mother
were bestowing upon his young wife, and that it
must stop at once, or I would see that they were
both taken up and tried by law. A few days later
I met the old man in the bazaar, and he told me
that they were giving his daughter much better
treatment, and that her husband was afraid that
I would have him up before the judge. Do you

wonder that our hearts bleed every time we pass
through the villages or towns and know that behind
the mud walls there are things going on like this
that are enough to make the angels in heaven weep?
Listen to this, dear friends, for it is true, every
word of it, in its literal bearing : —

“A young Brahmin lad of sixteen years was
married to a girl of nine. he girl’s appearance
did not suit the young man, and if she went near
him to serve him with food, he would hit her on
the crown of the head with his knuckles. She did
the household work, brought water for all, cleaned
the utensils and floor, did the washing, milked the
cow, and kept the stable clean. If the cow did not
yield the proper quantity of milk, she was punished.
Her father-in-law would hang her up to the beam
of the roof and beat her. He would sometimes

Class of Catechumens, Bethlehem, New Orleans.

suspend her by the ankles and under her head place
a vessel with red-hot coals, on which he sprinkled
red pepper almost enough to suffocate her. Some-
times when he had hung her to the rope for fear
that she would be tempted to break the rope and
fall, he would place thorny branches under her.
He inflicted punishments that decency forbids us
to relate. When her father heard of all this cruelty,
he exhorted his daughter not to run away, but to
stay and die. These words, ‘stay and die,’ sum up.
the life-sentence that Hinduism passes on the
Indian wife. The father would have been disgraced
had his daughter run away from her brutal hus-
band’s home.” ,

It is impossible to exaggerate the evils of child-
marriage. Physically it leads to torture, deformity,
ill health, and even to death by. violence. That its
evils are especially noticeable in the offspring is
self-evident. How can it be otherwise than that