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 CHAPTER VIII

LIFE IN LONDON (I)

After Mohandas had matriculated at Ahmadabad, he entered College at Bhavnagar, intending to graduate. On his first holiday visit to Rajkot, however, a Brahmin friend of the family, who was his spiritual adviser, turned his thoughts another way. A resident of Rajkot had just returned from London, after having been called to the Bar. The clear-sighted Brahmin pointed to him, saying, "If you wish to make headway in your country, and become, like your father, a man of importance, you had better relinquish the idea of graduating here. You must go to London and become a barrister."

Naturally, this idea, involving as it did, the necessity of travel, coincided entirely with the young student's desires. Adventure, sight-seeing, new circumstances, together with ambition for advancement, mingled with his dreams. He determined to go, if his mother and brother would consent. His father had died four years before. It was not difficult to persuade the brother. It seemed to him, as it did to the Brahmin, the only way of making