sandwich-men with boards inviting a vote for this or that candidate in
the elections to the new Indian Councils.

In all the strenuous life and immense wealth of this great city, to
which European enterprise first gave and still gives the chief impulse,
Indians are taking an increasing share. The Bengalees themselves still
hold very much aloof from modern developments of trade and industry, but
they were the first to appreciate the value of Western education, and
the Calcutta University with all its shortcomings has maintained the
high position which Lord Dalhousie foreshadowed for it nearly seventy
years ago. In art and literature the modern Bengalee has often known how
to borrow from the West without sacrificing either his own originality
or the traditions of his race or the spirit of his creed. Some of the
finest Bengalee brains have taken for choice to the legal profession and
have abundantly justified themselves both as judges in the highest court
of the province and as barristers and pleaders. In every branch of the
public services open to Indians and in all the liberal professions, as
well as in the civic and political life of their country, the Bengalees
have played a leading part, not restricted even to their own province,
and in the very distinguished person of Lord Sinha, Bengal has just
provided for the first time an Indian to represent the King-Emperor as
governor of a province--the neighbouring province of Behar and Orissa.
Nor have the women of Bengal been left behind as in so many other parts
of India. In Calcutta many highly educated ladies have won such complete
release from the ancient restraints imposed upon their sex that they
preside to-day over refined and cultured homes from which the subtle
atmosphere of the East does not exclude the ease and freedom of Western
habits of mind and body.

Yet these are still exceptions, and even in such a progressive city as