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PREFACE.


In her Introduction, Mrs. Chapman expresses some fear lest people in England should begin to weary of the subject of Indian women, so much having been written of late concerning them and their peculiar trials. But this little book needs no apology; and I, for one, have never read anything more interesting or more likely to be useful to the cause of female education in India than this small collection of biographies.

No one will read these Sketches of some Distinguished Indian Women without a feeling of intense sympathy and admiration for the subject of each one of them; or without pride and pleasure in the fact that so much talent, perseverance, and determination should be found combined with so much gentleness, and with so many truly feminine qualities. One might, perhaps, have feared that women who had had to break through the hard and fast rules of caste and