Memoirs of Anne C.L. Botta,: written by her friends. With selections from her correspondence and from her writings in prose and poetry.

2:nne C. X. cotta
when she was quite simple, natural, and most
anxious to please. Our introduction was the work
of a brief moment, but there was a difference between
that and every subsequent moment of my life.
She began at once to question me, her large soft
eyes glowing beneath her strong intellectual brow,
on the present condition of women in the East, and
Siam in particular.' She was delighted to hear of the
greater freedom allowed to Buddhist women. After
discussing, with a knowledge which was surprising,
the laws of the great Indian legislator, Manu, regarding women, which assert that "woman is by nature
unfit for independence, and that a wife should assume
the very qualities of her husband as a river loses
itself in the sea," she remarked: "This is quite in
contradiction to the old Vedic teachings, which everywhere upheld the sanctity of' motherhood'; and what
if the husband should happen to be a villain, a
profligate, or a murderer, should the wife then submerge herself into such a sea of iniquity?" "No,
no," she added; "Manu's laws may have been good
enough for the childhood of the world, but for a good
and loving wife to steep herself in the vices of her
husband, is as abhorrent as it is inconceivable to every
right-minded person." She ended, as was her wont,
by pointing out the remedial forces latent in human
nature itself, which tended to mitigate even those
1 Mrs. Leonowens, the writer of this tribute, lived several years in
Siam, as teacher and governess of the hereditary prince, the present
king of that country. She is the author of "The English Governess
at the Siamese Court," "The Romance of the Harem," and "Life
and Travels in India."
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