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status, whose number was necessarily limited. They had to wait till the girls grew in years and then they were married. My mother and my grandmother were quite grown-up young ladies when they were married, and, I believe, the same was the case with my great grandmother, whom I saw in my early years when she was over a hundred years of age. In the life history of my family I found the strongest argument against child-marriage, and I was never tired of repeating it when I had an opportunity in my public and private utterances. The members of my family have always enjoyed exceptional health, and I ascribe the fact largely to the absence of child-marriage for generations among them. This was the explanation I gave to Lord Hardinge, at one of the earliest interviews I had with him. He expressed his surprise at my physical alertness, which he thought was quite extraordinary for an Indian of my years. An ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory. I have placed these facts on record in the hope that they may influence the judgment of my countrymen in a matter of vital importance to their well-being. For, after all, the health and physique of a nation is the first condition of national progress.

I have as yet said nothing of the public movements of my youthful days. They did not, indeed, acquire the volume and intensity of those that followed them, for they did not appeal to as wide a public and had not behind them the same measure of public support or approval. The newspaper Press had not then become a power; public speaking on the platform had not come into vogue. The speeches of the great Ram Gopal Ghose were made at public meetings not very largely attended, or at the meetings of the Justices, who then, like the Corporation of to-day, were entrusted with the municipal administration of Calcutta.

It was Keshub Chunder Sen who first made use of the platform for public addresses and revealed the power of oratory over the Indian mind. In the early sixties and seventies of the last century the Brahmo-Samaj movement was a potent and living force, which exercised a profound, though possibly an indirect, influence even over orthodox Hindu society. Its immediate effect was to check the conversions to Christianity that were then taking place. Those who were dissatisfied with the old faith and felt the stirrings of the new spirit created by the eloquence of the great Brahmo leader, found comfort and consolation in the teachings of the new religion. Keshub Chunder Sen, originally a follower of Debendra Nath Tagore, had seceded from the Brahmoism as taught by the