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a most graphic picture of it in the following words : “ We 
in the West can hardly understand what it means that 
f rain has fallen in India/ and it may seem, at first sight 
— so wide is the world, and so far apart the interests of 
races-^-a strange thing that a fall of rain should be magnified 
by such language as is often used. And yet in a year of 
threatened famine it is not easy to find in history a greater 
blessing than the sudden relief of a shower. Those who best 
know the land so sorely athirst, — who remember the dreary, 
leafless months, when, scathed by hot winds, the country 
side lies bare and brown under a sky of relentless blue, 
and who have had experience, too, of that first day of 
gathering clouds, when the face of Nature betokens a welcome 
to the coming rain ; when almost in a single night the heat- 
cracked plains clothe themselves with grass, the fainting 
trees are lit up with the brightness of young leaves, and the 
world awakens on the morrow to a surprise of fertility, — 
these can best picture to themselves the true spectacle of the 
change that transfigures the face of India, when the clouds 
burst upon the empty fields. During the months of July, 
August, September, and October, which in other and more 
kindly seasons are rich with springing vegetation, and glad 
with the grace of standing corn, India lay, in 1877, wasting 
under a remorseless sun a great length of deadly days, 
while the ploughs stood idle under the old peepul tree in the 
centre of the village, and the men gathered gloomily about the 
headman's house; and sadly along the dusty highways went 
the tinkling feet of the women sent forth to the shrine by the 
river to supplicate the Goddess of Rain ; day by day the 
peasant doled out for the present meal the precious store put 
by for sowing of his fields for the next year’s harvest ; day by 
day the women going to the well found their ropes yet another 
inch too short for the bucket to drop into the shrinking water. 
The cattle, long ago turned loose to find their food where they 
could, had given up the vain search in the fields, and lingered 
about the villages sniffing at the empty troughs, and lowing 
impatiently for the evening meal of bitter leaves which the 
lads were beating down from the trees in the jungle. And 
then there came over many a sad village a day when the 
bucket brought up no water from the well, when the grain - 
bag was empty and the cattle dead. Famine, stealthy and 
pitiless, prowled from village to village. 
“ Along the raised pathways between the empty fields the 
sad processions of mourners filed all day, bearing to the river- 
side the bodies of the dead. Yet the sun still flamed ruthless 
in the sky. The villages gradually emptied of men ; seme 
