Speech at the Johannesburg Banquet
were sung one should fly from those praises, and, if one could not do that, one should stop one's ears, and if one could not do either of these things one should dedicate, everything that was said in connection with one to the Almighty, the Divine Essence, which pervaded everyone and everything in the Universe, and he hoped that Mrs. Gandhi and he would have the strength to dedicate all that had been said that evening to that Divine Essence.
Of all the precious gifts that had been given to them those four boys were the most precious, and probably Mr. Chamney could tell them something of the law of adoption in India and what Mr. and Mrs. Naidoo, both of them old gaol-birds, had done. They had gone through the ceremony of adoption, and they had surrendered their right to their four children and given them (Mr. and Mrs. Gandhi) the charge. He did not know that they were worthy to take charge of those children. He could only assure them that they would try to do their best. The four boys had been his pupils when he had been conducting a school for Passive Resisters at Tolstoy Farm and later on at Phœnix. Then when Mrs. Naidoo had sought imprisonment, the boys had been taken over to
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