Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/29

 within. For, soon after joining the Deccan College he determined to lay the foundation of that physical strength and endurance, which, in spite of worries and hard intellectual work stood him in good stead during the whole of his life. For full one year, he neglected his studies and devoted practically all his time exclusively to physical culture. Swimming, boating and wrestling were his pastimes. Morning and evening he passed through a severe course of Indian gymnastics. At the end of the year, he failed in his F. A. examination but he succeeded in his ambition and became a robust young man. Instead of being required to measure the quantity of his daily food, his powers of digestion were wonderfully developed. When some years later, he had an occasion to take food for a few months in an hotel at Bombay, the manager found him the least profitable of all customers. He could now stand the rigours of heat and cold and could with impunity spend hours together in physical or mental work. Even in 1900, when his health was unsatisfactory and he could hardly be said to have recovered from the shock of the prison-life of 1897-98, he swam across the Ganges—a distance of more than a quarter of a mile. Once asked the secret of his intellectual tenacity, Mr. Tilak particularly referred to this period of his youth and said "If one only attends to one's body as one does to one's mind from the age of 16 to that of 25, and if the physical strength thus stored up is not dissipated by gluttony or vice, one can stand any amount of hard intellectual work till old age."

This acquisition of health and strenth increased the buoyancy of his mind and he heartily joined in all the