Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/47

community of redressing our wrongs and protecting our rights, personal and collective. In the midst of impending ruin and dark, frowning misfortune, I formed the determination of addressing myself to the task of helping our helpless people in this direction.

I was in England from April, 1874, to May, 1875; and during these thirteen months I shut myself up in my lodgings, in the village of East Molesey near Hampton Court, devoting myself to such studies as I thought would qualify me for this work. From ten o’clock in the morning after breakfast till dinner time at eight o’clock in the evening, I was incessantly at work, reading books that I thought would inspire me with the fervour and equip me with the capacity for that which was to be my life-work. I used to make copious notes with indices, and these are even now in my possession. Occasionally I used to run up to London, and see friends, and consult as to what should be done in order to be called to the Bar; but it would be no exaggeration to say that I was immersed in my books and felt no higher pleasure than in the companionship of the great masters, with whom I was then in daily communion.

It was a year of preparation, of laborious apprenticeship (from April, 1874, to April, 1875) that was most valuable in my life, and upon which I look back with infinite pleasure. The gloom that surrounded me was dispelled in the new vision that opened out to me in the prospective glories of a dedicated life of unselfish devotion in the service of my fallen country. It was a period of incessant work led by an invisible inspiration. I recovered my buoyancy in the new hope that was awakened in me, and the joy that thrilled me, that all was not lost, but that there was still work to be done by me, perhaps even in a higher sphere than before. Out of death cometh life, a higher life and a nobler resurrection. So it was in my case.

I returned home in June, 1875, a ruined man in the estimation of all, save and except my wife and myself. She received me, when we first met on my return, with a bright and cheery countenance—and here let me for a moment pause to pay a tribute of loving and admiring respect to the memory of my dear lamented wife. She did not indeed receive the education which fortunately is now common among Indian ladies of her class and position. But she possessed extraordinary gifts of commonsense, sympathy and courage. She firmly stood by me in this dark crisis, and never thought that ruin and confusion had seized us. Not one regretful