Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1.djvu/404

 Another trait in him was that he was a fund of stories—there was no end of anecdotes. We, shallow people, think that anecdotage is only a mark of dotage. We think that the man is shallow and he cannot think of abstract principles and maxims. It may so in some cases. But in the case of Sastri Mahashai, anecdotes were the stepping-stones of details in life on which he rose to the higher self. Every one of these he used as a crystallised principle, a concretised maxim, a truth distilled into the essence of experienced facts. And how these came, not with the deliberate effort of one who seeks to make himself agreeable, but with the spontaneity of one in whom they were all deposited as a treasure for narration and edification! With what i kindliness and glow and with what charm and persuasiveness they came I He did not hesitate to narrate anecdotes about himself, because they were facts, they wore truths. Once a man came up to us^ talking incoherently; Pandit Sastri said: he would see him by and by because we were going to a place