Page:Letters from Abroad.pdf/126

 limits of my arrested twenty-seventh year in sheer haste for keeping appointed time! When one is not compelled to keep count of time, one forgets to grow old; but when you must constantly consult your watch, you are pushed into your twenty-eighth year directly you complete your twenty-seventh. Do we not have the example of Nepal Babu before our eyes? He never respects time; and therefore time fails to exact its taxes from him and he remains young. In this, he is an inveterate non-cooperator—he has boycotted the Government of Chronometry! And I want to register my name on the list of his chelas. I shall strew my path of triumphant unpunctuality with shattered watch dials, and miss my trains that lead to the terminus of mature age.

But, Sir, what about my International University? It will have its time-keeper, who is no respecter of persons—not even of the special privileges some twenty-seventh year which has taken its Satyagraha vow never to move forward. I am afraid its bell will toll me into the haze of hoariness across the grey years of fifty. Pray for my youth, my dear friend, if it ever dies of old age, brought about by self-imposed responsibility of ambitious altruism!

This is a beautiful country, a dwelling place of the Gods invaded by man. The town is so dainty