Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/336

 CHAPTER XXI

THE MAN

The pages of thy book I read. And as I closed each one, My heart responding, ever said, " Servant of God I Well done I" Longfellow.

LIKE his literary career, Mr. Tilak's private life was almost absorbed into his political existence and it serves but to enhance the charm of his magnetic personality and romantic career ; and yet, considered even separately, that private life, lived in the full blaze of publicity, will serve as a model for all those who consider self-introspection and self-elevation as the principle duty of life. Charles Stuart Parnell is reported to have said in one of his moments of infatuation that his public life belonged to his country and that his private life was his own. Mr. Tilak made no such distinction and his public career was only the logical outcome of those qualities of the heart, which have been over and over tested in his private life. Excepting what have been sent bv the cold hand of Death, no cloud has marred the sunshine of his domestic felicity. His wife, calm, active and devoted, without the least touch of the modern wo- man in her, made his private life perfectly happy to him. She bore him six children,~three sons and three daughters, the latter all married — and died on 6th June 1912, while Mr. Tilak was at Mandalay. His eldest son