History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

320 HISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [CHAP. VI.

all are the thousand happy young faces around me, You are doing the truest work of female education, You are teaching little children to grow up into happy and intelligent girls, so that they may hereafter develop into good and sympathetic women.”

Mr. Lee-Warner said :—

“This institution is a remarkable proof that public sympathy is not withheld from female education. It is entirely self-supporting, and I shall detain your attention for a few minutes in pointing out the salient features which have made the Parsi Girls’ School Association so successful. I notice in your address four great points. The first is, that as you have undertaken the education of your own daughters you have solved the religious difficulty, Education in morality and the cherished religious principles of religion is essential to the formation of the character of the rising generation. The State, bound by the principle of religious neutrality, cannot introduce into its curriculum religious instruction. You, however, make ‘religious lessons in the most approved Zoroastrian books’ part of your course, and thus you train your little girls to be mothers who can instil into the minds of their children the truths which you cherish. There is another ereat advantage in parents conducting the education of the children of their own community. You, gentlemen of the Committee, have in your address deprecated the system of early marriages. As practical teachers you feel the objection to a social custom which as parents and as leaders of the community you can hereafter help to remove by forcing a strong public opinion on the matter. This is the advantage of getting classes of the community to manage their own affairs, and direct their own educational movements. They learn to look at practices from several points of view. They are parents and also teachers, and what they feel in the latter capacity they can enforce in the former. It will be a grand revolution when you are able to realise in ordinary life what you have expressed as managers of an educational institution, namely, that early marriages take children into. the hardships of life before they are intellectually and morally fitted to bear the strain. The second point refers