a folly I had committed. When Gokhale came to know that all of us slept on the floor, he removed the cot which had been brought for him and had his own bed too spread on the floor. This whole night was a night of repentance for me. Gokhale had a rule in life which seemed to me a bad rule. He would not permit any one except a servant to wait upon him. He had no servant with him during this tour. Mr Kallenbach and I entreated him to let us massage his feet. But he would not let us even touch him, and half jocularly, half angrily said: ‘You all seem to think that you have been born to suffer hardships and discomforts, and people like myself have been born to be pampered by you. You must suffer today the punishment for this extremism of yours. I will not let you even touch me. Do you think that you will go out to attend to nature’s needs and at the same time keep a commode for me? I will bear any amount of hardship but I will humble your pride.’ These words were to us like a thunderbolt, and deeply grieved Mr Kallenbach and me. The only consolation was, that Gokhale wore a smile on his face all the while. Krishna no doubt was often deeply offended by Arjuna, ‘unknowing of His majesty and careless in the fondness of his love,’ but he soon forgot such incidents. Gokhale remembered only our will to serve, though he did not accord us the high privilege of serving him. The deeply affectionate letter he wrote me from Mombasa is still imprinted upon my heart. Gokhale bore everything cheerfully, but till the last never accepted the service which it was in our power to render. He had to take the food etc., from our hands, but that he could not help.
The next morning he allowed no rest either to himself or to us. He corrected all his speeches which we proposed to publish in book form. When he had to write anything, he was in the habit of walking to and fro and thinking it out. He had to write a small letter and I thought that he would soon have done with it. But no. As I twitted him upon it, he read me a little homily: ‘You do not know my ways of life. I will not do even the least little thing in a hurry. I will think about it and consider the central
