Page:Heroes of the hour- Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer.djvu/155

 Principal of the Boston University has characterised Mr. Tilak's methods as the outcome of absolute candour and respect for the strictest historical and scientific investigation.

For once in the life of Mr. Tilak he had to suffer the agonies that to a public man are the most excruciating. Imprisonment for sedition has no terrors absolutely none when compared to the anguish that an impeachment of private character brings with it, especially when such an impeachment arises out of circumstances into which the individual enters with high motives to render service as best as it lies in his power to do. When one has done one's duty and satisfied one's own conscience one has no need to feel worried over the littlenesses of others who, actuated very often by small selfish ends, sometimes by mere jealousy and malice, and sometimes by their own imperfect understanding, try to besmear the loftiest characters with mud and tar. Still caring, as every one does, for the opinion of the world, all that have to deal with the many-headed and the many-tongued public feel, under normal conditions, the insult wantonly offered by little tin-gods possessing, for the time-being,