nurse. If any one nearby was in need, Brahmin or Sudra, she was the one to render help as soon as possible. Every morning the old gate-way was besieged by twenty or thirty poverty-stricken people, who came to receive the alms or the cup of whey which was never refused: just as though the house were a mediæval convent, and she an Indian Saint Elizabeth. It was her influence, more than any other, that formed the character of her boy.
Here is a glimpse of the Holy of Holies. "When," he said, "my going as a student to London was proposed, after long refusal, my mother consented on one condition. She had heard of the loose, immoral lives lived in that far-off city, and she trembled for her son. Taking me before a Swami of the Jain Sect, she made me swear a threefold oath, to abjure the attractions of wine, of flesh, and of women. And that oath," he added, "saved me from many a pitfall in London."
