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community, especially in Bengal. The tragedy to which I refer was the murder of Dr. Suresh Chunder Sircar of Barrackpore. Dr. Suresh Chunder Sircar was a medical man with a large practice. He was held in great esteem for his skill and his kindness to his patients. He had also some European patients. They too recognized his worth and his skill. He had a dispensary near the Barrackpore station. One night in April, 1898, while he was about to leave for home, after finishing his day's work, three European soldiers, more or less the worse for liquor, called at his dispensary. His carriage was ready, and he was about to start. Some words were interchanged; an altercation ensued; and the European soldiers brutally attacked him. He had to be removed to hospital, where he died within twenty-four hours.

After the murderous attack upon the doctor, his assailants ran away, chased by a crowd whom the shouts and the shricks of the doctor had brought to the spot. They ran as fast as their legs could carry them. The excitement of drunkenness had apparently passed away, amid the horrors of the scene which they had helped to create. The doctor lay weltering in a pool of blood, but there were some among the crowd who chased the soldiers. Two of them ran back to the barracks, leaving a helmet behind, which the pursuers picked up; and a third, fortunately. for the ends of justice, took shelter inside a mosque, which was immediately closed from outside. The police were informed and brought in. They caught the man red-handed within the mosque.

The doctor was my family physician, a dear and esteemed friend. I heard the details of the tragedy with grief and indignation. The doctor lay in the hospital close to my house; but in my eager desire to bring the offenders to justice I hurried off, without seeing my dying friend, to Alipore, a distance of sixteen miles, to inter- view the magistrate with a view to moving him to take prompt action for the punishment of the perpetrators of this dastardly outrage. For cases of this kind, having regard to the temper of European juries in those days, had to be carefully attended to even from the start.

The magistrate was Mr. Charles Allen, an officer of great promise, who, if he had been spared, would probably have risen to the highest offices in the service. He was a personal friend. We had known each other while he was at Chittagong on settlement work. The late poet, Nobin Chunder Sen, who was a Chittagong man and knew him well, spoke of him as one who some day would