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Roy, Keshub Chunder Sen, must be your constant companions. Your souls must be attuned to the pathos and the music of the Bande-Matarama.' All that is best and truest must form a part of the moral composition of the orator. Let him have it—in whatever measure he can, but he must have it—and the words will come gurgling from the fountains of the heart. His intellectual equipment, though important, is subsidiary. The moral takes precedence.

Among the intellectual qualifications to which I attach the utmost importance is the power of concentration. Gladstone possessed it in a pre-eminent degree. It is useful in all walks of life. To the orator, who can always live in the midst of his thoughts, arranging them for impressive presentment, the quality is especially valuable. I have zealously cultivated it through life and have found it a valu- able aid to all my efforts. When a boy of only eleven years of age, I remember coming down in a boat to Calcutta from Manirampore near Barrackpore, our ancestral home. My father, my eldest brother, my cousin, the late Dwaraka Nath Banerjee, barrister-at- law, and one or two others were in the boat. They were engaged in a boisterous conversation. I had a lesson to prepare for my class; it was a verse consisting of a dozen lines, which I had to commit to memory. I sat in one corner of the boat, heedless of the talk that was going on, and by the time we reached Calcutta I was ready to repeat the verses. Every faculty grows with cultivation; and now when I am at work I am absolutely absorbed in it, insensible to all distraction, unless I am directly spoken to.

I may here be permitted to relate an incident in this connexion known only to myself and to some members of my family. When Queen Victoria died, I was invited by Lord Curzon, through my esteemed friend, Mr. Greer, then Chairman of the Corporation, to take part in the memorial meeting, which was to be held at the Town Hall. The Viceroy himself was to preside. Permission was given to me to select my own Resolution. The preparation of the speech, which in my opinion was one of the best I ever made, took me about an hour and a half. I sat down the evening before, at a table in one corner of a room about sixteen feet by twelve, at the other end of which were my children, playing and frolicking with all the ardour of children. Their frolics did not at all disturb me. I was absolutely insensible to their prattlings, and when I had finished the preparation of the speech I joined them.

My professorial work greatly helped me in my public speeches, for I had to teach the classics of the English language. Among