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a speech, the first I believe that I ever made in my life. At the railway station at Howrah, Keshub Chunder Sen and other friends met us.

I went straight home and met my widowed mother, how changed from what.she was when I saw her last on the day preceding my visit to England! The sorrows and privations of Hindu widowhood had evidently told upon her body and mind.

All three of us (Romesh Chunder Dutt, Behari Lal Gupta and myself) stayed in our homes, and the Hindoo Patriot, the leading Hindu journal of the time, edited by Kristo Das Pal, announced that we had been received back into the bosom of our homes and Hindu society. It was a bold step for my mother and my brothers to have given me a place in a Brahmin family, and to have eaten and drunk and lived with me. My father was by no means orthodox in his ways, and his transgressions against strict orthodoxy were numerous and grave; but a visit to England was not one of them. Forbidden food and drink he used to take with an ostentation that shocked my grandfather. But Hindu society said nothing, winked at it, forgot and forgave.

A visit to England, however, was a new form of heterodoxy to which our society had not yet become accustomed. The Anglicized habits of some of those who had come back from England added to the general alarm. The leaders indeed applauded the courage of the members of my family in taking me back into the old home, but the whole attitude of Hindu society, of the rank and file, was one of unqualified disapproval. My family was practically outcasted. We were among the highest of Brahmins; but those who used to eat and drink with us on ceremonial occasions stopped all intercourse and refused to invite us. There were some who, jealous of my father’s fame and of my recent success, took advantage of this opportunity to settle old scores. These party and caste squabbles often afforded an admirable opportunity for the satisfaction of private grudges, and I have known of some cases within the last year or two where personal spite stimulated a sense of outraged religion.

I am now talking of a state of things which prevailed little less than half a century ago. But in the meantime a silent and stupendous change has taken place. A sea-voyage or a visit to Europe no longer involves the loss of caste. Among the Brahmins, especially in the mofussil, there may be some squeamishness in the matter; but among other castes, a man may visit any part of the