Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/125



How to get good, nutritious, healthy and palatable food for 9s per week is the question before us. At the outset I may say that those only can live on that sum who " eat to live", not "live to eat". If you must have the luxuries, if you cannot sit at the table without company, if you must entertain friends pretty frequently to sumptuous dinners, if you must live like a gourmand, then for you ten times the sum may not be sufficient. But if you would live frugally and happily and not luxuriously, 9s per week would be more than sufficient. I earnestly beseech the reader to dismiss from his mind all premeditated ideas, all prejudice, and he will, I am sure, see for himself that without entailing any loss of health, but rather keeping it up, he would find 9s sufficient for his food per week. As nothing tells like illustrations, I would first cite illustrations in support of the contention that one pound a week is sufficient for a person of frugal habits and not born in the lap of luxury or rather not addicted to a luxurious mode of living. There are thousands of commercial gentlemen living on one pound a week in England. I had a chat with an Anglo-Indian here who said that he was living on one pound a week. There is a gentleman who is an M.A., B.E.L., Barristerat-Law, who lived on 10s a week and has yet been living on less than one pound a week. He is the editor of a newspaper and I have seen him work at the rate of 16 hours or more per diem. He was, when I saw him last, living on bread, figs and water. There are Irish M.P."s living on one pound per week. And some of them are the best debaters. The late Mr. Biggor, M.P., I believe, lived on one pound a week. And what did Charles Bradlaugh do? Says Mrs. Annie Besant of him:

He sold everything he possessed except his books. His home that he had got together by hard work, his furniture, even a diamond ring given to him by a grateful person whom he had helped. He sent his children to school. His wife, not physically able to bear the life he faced, went to live with her parents in the country and he took two small rooms in Turner Street, White Chapel, for which he paid 3s 6d a week and where he remained until he had cleared off most of his liabilities. He then moved to lodgings over a music shop in Circus Road, St. John's Wood, where he lived for the remainder of his life, his daughters joining him on the death of their mother in 1877... He died poor indeed with no personal property save his library, his Indian gifts and his very modest wardrobe, but he left his name free, his honour unstained.