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prohibited sub-castes of Brahmins and Kayasthas are not infrequent, and I have had some personal share in this reform. Beneficent are the activities of the Brahmo Samaj, but behind them is the slower but larger movement of the general community, all making towards progress.

I have now closed my reminiscences. They are the product of mature thought and prolonged deliberation, and of the conviction that a public life so eventful as mine, so full of changes, from the prison to the council chamber, from dismissal from public service to elevation to Ministerial office, may prove useful to my country- men. There is yet a long journey ahead of us before we reach the promised land. The desert has not yet been crossed. We are scarcely over the first stage. A long, long period of toil and travail awaits us; and perhaps in this wearisome journey the counsel and example of a fellow-traveller, who has some experience of it in its early stages, and has tasted its toils and its triumphs, may be welcomed by those who, foot-sore with travel and oppressed with the burden- someness of their task, may look around for inspiration, if not guidance. I claim to have had a high patriotic purpose in writing these reminiscences. I want to do justice to the memories of hon- oured colleagues, many of whom are now dead. I want to indicate the beginnings, the growth, and the early development of national life, so that they may afford a guide for the future. Above all, I want to guard against the perils and temptations that beset us in the onward march to our goal. I began these reminiscences on May 31, 1915, in my quiet little villa in the suburbs of Ranchi, now in the province of Behar, and I continued them steadily till they were interrupted by my appointment as Minister of Local Self-govern- ment. I resumed the work in January, 1924; and it has been to me a labour of love; for it has enabled me to live over again the days of my youth and manhood in the companionship of honoured colleagues whom death has removed from our ranks. No pleasure is comparable to that which one feels amid surroundings which have passed away, but the memory of which still lives. Indeed, it takes one away from the living present to the dead past a past, however, no longer inanimate or inert, but revived into life by the touch of the memories of strenuous work and high aspirations.

Now what is the moral to which these reminiscences point, and the lesson which they seek to enforce? Let me here quote Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt—and he was no dreamer, not even an enthusiast. He was a man of affairs, and one of the most level-