find our school a hopelessly unsanitary makeshift to be endured
patiently for a few years longer, but to these girls with their
background of wretchedly poor village homes it is in its bare
cleanliness, as well as in its associations, a veritable place of
'sweetness and light.'"


Athletics.

Organized play is one of the gifts that school life brings to India. It,
too, has to be learned, for the Indian girl has had no home training in
initiative. The family or the caste is the unit and she is a passive
member of the group, whose supreme duty is implicit obedience. One
Friday when school had just reopened after the Christmas vacation, one
of the teachers came to the principal and said, "May we stop all classes
this afternoon and let the children play? You see," as she saw
remonstrance forthcoming, "it's just _because_ it's been vacation. They
say they have been so long at home and there has been no chance to
play." Classes were stopped, and all the school played, from the
greatest unto the least, until the newly aroused instinct was satisfied.

Basket ball had an interesting history in one school. At first the
players were very weak sisters, indeed. The center who was knocked down
wept as at a personal affront, and the defeated team also wept to prove
their penitence for their defeat. But gradually the team learned to play
fair, to take hard knocks, and to cheer the winners. They grew into such
"good sports" that when one day an invading cow, aggrieved at being hit
in the flank by a flying ball, turned and knocked the goal thrower flat
on the ground, the interruption lasted only a few minutes. The prostrate
goal-thrower recovered her breath, got over her fright, and, while