Miss Lester on St. Gandhi

Aflutter last week was Miss Muriel Lester of Kingsley Hall Settlement, Bow, who had just received a letter from her good friend Mahatma Gandhi that if & when he goes to London to confer with Prime Minister MacDonald he does not want to stay at Hampstead's Indian Hostel as expected, but at her settlement house. Reporters found Kingsley Hall very clean and neat, smelling slightly of disinfectant. It has a large flat roof from which St. Gandhi may survey the squalid East End, and a large bronze bell, presented by white-whiskered First Commissioner of Works George Lansbury.

In the visitors' parlor Miss Lester told reporters her memories of the great man:

"One of his rules is, 'Whenever you are in danger of infection, fast.' He loves doctoring. When I was at the Ashram [Gandhi's religious retreat] I was ill for a day or two, nothing serious, but Mr. Gandhi insisted on treating me and he made me fast much longer than I thought necessary. He came to see me on his weekly day of silence and therefore he wrote down all his questions, and such comments as what he thought of my tongue when I put it out at a gesture from him. I registered a mental vow that if ever a germ got down me again I would not let him know about it.

"Once he went to see his colleague Mrs. Sarojini Xaidu when she was ill. She was staying at a very fine hotel. Everyone there was extremely excited in expectation of the great man's visit. When they were all keyed up a humble looking man dressed like a coolie stepped into the lift. The liftman, not troubling to look at the Intruder, turned him out with a surly 'Get out, you. Who do you think you are? Mahatma Gandhi?' Mr. Gandhi said nothing but climbed quietly up the stairs and paid his visit to Mrs. Naidu."

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