It is easy to perceive the marvels of the past, and belief in them is unimportant. But to realize the strange significance of the man at my side, and to understand the things he believed in at the moment was a different matter. He continued to discourse about the villages half hidden in the deep valleys below, and narrate their sufferings, hopes, and varying prosperity as if he had no further thought on earth beyond their cattle and their rice. But I knew that at Nagpur in the Central Provinces, things had just been happening which deeply involved himself and his party. The annual meeting of the National Congress was to have been held there at Christmas. The Reception Committee had met to appoint a President, and the Moderates of the majority chose Dr. Rash Behari Ghose. Thereupon, the Extremists, insisting upon their majority in the Central Provinces and in the Executive Committee, chose Mr. Tilak. He in turn proposed Mr. Lajpat Rai, as a compromise; but, with his usual chivalry, Mr. Lajpat Rai refused to stand rather than risk a division among the reform party, or an open breach between the Congress and the Government. To be sure, deeper questions of principle or of method lay behind these personal disputes, but on the personal question of the President the Nagpur meeting had just broken up in disorder. The Moderates had determined not to hold the Congress at Nagpur at all, but to accept the invitation of Surat, only a few hours’ journey north of Bombay, which was the headquarters of the strongest section among them.