The lady sent her servants out to look, and
at last they brought in a little girl of four years old. And where do you
think they had found her? Buried up to her throat in a bog, her little
head alone peeping out. And who do you think had put her there? Her
cruel mother. Yes, she had left her there to die.
This child gave a great deal of trouble to the kind lady who had saved
her, nor did she show her any love in return for her kindness; and after
keeping her about two years, the lady sent her to a missionary's school.
You see how cruelly mothers in India sometimes treat their children.
Their religion teaches them to be cruel.
A mother is taught to believe that if her babe is sick, an evil spirit is
angry. To please this evil spirit, she will put her babe in a basket, and
hang it up in a tree for three days. She goes then to look at it, and if
it be alive, she takes it home. But how seldom does she find it alive!
Either the ants or the vultures have eaten it, or it is starved to death.
When there is a famine in the land, many mothers will sell their children
for sixpence each: and if they cannot sell them, they will leave them to
perish.
One missionary received fifty-one poor starving children into his house:
they were always crying, "Sahib, roti, roti;" that is, "Master, bread,
bread." But the bread came to late too save their lives; for all died
except one.
Yet these sick children were very wicked.
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