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૯૮ ]
જૈન કોન્ફરન્સ હેરલ્ડ
[ એપ્રીલ
But I can not avoid the temptation of telling you very shortly by way of introduction that, had it not been for the specific denial of my learned brother Mr. Gulabchand Damnania to preside Over this gathering for other urgent engagements and indifferent health, I should not have made an exception to the rule of leading a life of being a votary on the alter of Minerva rather than that of a preacher by being a president, for which, I, with all your efforts to the contrary, never consider myself worthy. As my denial seemed to disconcert my young enthusiastic workers in their arrangement, I had to submit to their wishes for which I am very much thankful to you for the partiality shown to me especially in face of so many luminaries of our community whose disciple I would be proud to be counted.
In the outset I should frankly admit I am not an orator or a lecturer and I am not meant to be one in the strict sense of the term. I consider only that man, an orator who by juxtapo sition of verbiage and artistic form of logical reasoning can immediately appeal to the head and heart simultaneously without submitting himself to the catching pitfalls of the idols of the cave--I mean fallacious and sophistical arguments. Oratory itself is an art, a gift, and requires development and chestening with res pect to which owing to various circumstances I have made no progress for which I hope to be excused.
Coming directly to the occasion of our gathering, I should at once state that it is a very good beginning towards the assimilation of the general Jain world under a common standard towards which the progressive educated class is moving or rather ought to move. Looking to the numerical value of our community, the different individual questions to which our energies have to be directed over and above to the general questions common to all the Hindus and the struggle for existence owing to the aforesaid two
