Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/189

 had been assigned to him. Even a man Uke Sir WilHam Wedderburn, with all the gentle virtues of a God-fearing Christian and high-souled Englishman, has not escaped de- nunciation at the hands of some of his own countrymen. It is no wonder that Mr. A. O. Hume, with his more passionate temperament and irrepressible enthusiasm, called down upon his devoted head still more fierce denunciations and even abuse at the hands of the very same critics. But he never swerved from the path he had chalked out for himself."

The Hindi Punch wrote that the Political Rishi of modern Bharat Land had taken his samddhi — the last farewell — leaving his favourite child, now a grown-up and healthy handmaid, in the service of this country. " He watched and tended the child in the cradle. He witnessed with joy the baby's toddlings. He has seen the gradual growth of the maid, and he leaves her to-day wise and strong to blow the piercing conch-shell and arouse Britannia and to beg for just rights. li is no fighting suffragette who weeps to-day for her great and good father, but a gentle spirit that roams about teaching great truths and demanding great and oft- promised rights in the interests of the Mother-country. All honour to the noble parent ! India mourns the passing of a great man, and that man has an abiding haven in the expansive and grateful heart of the Motherland. "

Finally, the Beharee held that at his grave Indians must sink all their differences, and with a feeling of enduring grati- tude to him knit themselves into a united body, common heirs to a common heritage, bound together by fealty to his love of our common Motherland. " The spirit of Mr. Hume will lov- ingly hover over the Congress gathering of 1912 ; and nothing, not even the brightest and the best monument we can raise to his great and beneficent memory, will be half as pleasing to him as the union of his political heirs in maintaining the integrity and greatness of the organization which India owes to him as the greatest consequence of the British advent and occupation of the country."

Public meetings were held at all the principal cities and