one of the large class of men in India who, though they do not care to break openly with their national religious customs, yet have ceased to have any real belief in the teaching of Brahmanism, and no doubt it was from him that Jamuna learnt, while still quite young, to realise the absurdity and falseness of the worship of idols. She was of an imaginative temperament, and both she and all her family appear to have been greatly impressed by a dream she had as a child, and in which, as she believed, her famous Mahratta ancestor appeared to her, and told her that she alone of all his descendants had truly inherited his spirit and his talents, and that she was destined to achieve some great thing.
When she was but five years old, the family party was increased by a young man, another member of the Joshee clan, named Gopal Vinyak Joshee, whose coming was destined to have a great influence upon her life. He was a clerk in the Government Post Office Department, and a fairly educated man. He took a great fancy to Jamuna, and finding her most anxious to learn, he undertook to teach her Sanskrit, and continued to give her lessons for three years.
At the end of that time Gopal was transferred to the post office at Alibag, and his little pupil's grief at the prospective interruption to her studies knew no bounds. She fancied that she would never have any further opportunities of learning, and her thirst for
