[Illustration: MEENACHI OF MADURA
The Average Girl, a Bride at Twelve]

Then there came the lady of the Taj, Mumtaz Mahal, beloved of Shah
Jahan, the Master Builder. We know less of her history, less of the
secret of her charm, only that she died in giving birth to her
thirteenth child, and that for all those years of married life she had
held her husband's adoration. For twenty-two succeeding years he spent
his leisure in collecting precious things from every part of his world
that there might be lacking no adornment to the most exquisite tomb ever
raised. And when it was finished--rare commentary on the contradiction
of Mughal character--the architect was blinded that he might never
produce its like again.

All that was a part of yesterday--a story of rise and fall; of woman's
repression, with outbursts of greatness; of countless treasures of
talent and possibilities unrecognized and undeveloped, hidden behind the
doors of Indian zenanas. What of to-day?


TO-DAY: The Average Girl.

Meenachi of Madura, if she could become articulate, might tell us
something of the life of the average girl to-day. Being average, she
belongs neither to the exclusive streets of the Brahman, nor to the
hovels of the untouchable outcastes, but to the area of the great middle
class which is in India as everywhere the backbone of society.
Meenachi's father is a weaver of the far-famed Madura muslins with their
gold thread border. Her earliest childhood memory is the quiet weavers'
street where the afternoon sun glints under the tamarind trees and,