[Bead before the Texas Academy of Science, October 1 , 1897 . ] 
SCIENCE ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
Address to the Texas Academy of Science by the President, 
Dr. George Bruce Halsted. 

Julian Hawthorne says that eight million human beings have just 
starved to death in India for lack of a few opportune rains. 
Some have answered that he overestimates the numbers, as not all of 
the eight million are yet dead. 
So it may he best to give the unused words of three bicyclers in a brief 
glimpse at the reality. They say: “Not a hundred yards from this noisy 
mirth were several hundred poor, fleshless, hone-protruding, cringing 
wretches who had crawled in from the famine districts seeking a handful 
of rice from Government relief commissioners or from the missionaries. 
They were huddled in a compound, listlessly submitting to ‘Kismet/ and 
while uncomplaining about their distress, exhibiting small thankfulness 
for the aid extended them. There was not an agitator amongst them, 
not a single denouncer of the Government. They simply squatted in 
corners, their narrow shoulders perched high, their chocolate skins tight- 
ly casing their thin, prominent ribs, a look of blank submission on their 
faces — a spectacle of inert, heedless starvation.” 
“There were thousands of trudging pilgrims along the way, worn, ill- 
fed gangs of men and women who had walked hundreds of miles to make 
their future state secure by bathing from one of the sacred ghats by the 
side of the sacred city.” 
“Down this way is a Hindu dragging a goat to he sacrificed to a god- 
dess who, it is hoped, will cure his sickness; a woman is taking flowers as 
an offering to the god of creation; down by the river thousands of folks 
are in mute posture, training the mind to forget the world.” “All comers 
bring flowers and fruit and money, and stretch themselves out before the 
black stone. And when they have splashed enough water, and tossed 
enough flowers, and lain long enough on the hard slabs, they go away 
ever so much better.” 
This straightforward description of three cycling tourists gives a 
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