regards the management of the press. Every month I had to meet a small or large deficit, and I was therefore desirous of having a more definite idea of my possible liabilities. Madanjit had no experience of printing press business and I had been thinking since the beginning, that it would be well to associate a trained hand with him. The plague broke out in the meantime, and as Madanjit was just the man for such a crisis, I put him on to nursing. And I closed with West’s unexpected offer and told him that he was to go not temporarily while the epidemic lasted, but for good. Hence his report on the prospects of the paper just referred to.
The reader knows how at last both the paper and the press were removed to Phoenix, where West drew a monthly allowance of £3 instead of £10 as previously arranged. West was himself fully agreeable to all these changes. I never observed in him the least anxiety as to how he would be able to maintain himself. I recognized in him a deeply religious spirit, although he was not a student of religion. He was a man of perfectly independent temperament. He would say what he thought of all things, and would not hesitate to call a spade a spade. He was quite simple in habits. He was unmarried when we first met, and I know that he lived a life of spotless purity. Some years later he went to England to see his parents and returned a married man. By my advice he brought with him his wife, mother-in-law and unmarried sister, who all lived in extreme simplicity and in every way fraternized with the Indians in Phoenix. Miss Ada West (or Devi Behn as we used to call her) is now 35 years old, is still unmarried and leads a most pious life. She too rendered to the pioneers at Phoenix services of no mean order. At one time or another she looked after the little children, taught them English, cooked in the common kitchen, swept the houses, kept accounts and did composing and other work in the press. Whatever task came to her, she never hesitated in doing it. She is not now in Phoenix, but that is because since my return to India the press has been unable to meet even her small personal
