244
ON THE COROMANDEL COAST
Natives are accustomed to sit on the floor, and they are unhappy if they have to adopt any other mode of sitting. It would be positively inhuman to make the little ones use the benches, so the forms ' stand in the school-room ready for the Inspector's visit, while the children follow the custom of their forefathers for a thousand generations and sit on the floor. It reminded me/ adds the Bishop, 'of the story of the missionary in one of the South Sea Islands, who wrote home saying that he could not induce his flock to give up cannibalism, but, happily, he had persuaded them to use knives and forks. If we cannot educate the village children, at any rate we can teach them to sit on benches.'
