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having taken my B.A. degree, I was about to leave the college, my Principal, Mr. John Sime of the University of St. Andrew's, who afterwards became Director of Public Instruction in the Punjab, strongly urged my father to send me to England to compete for the Indian Civil Service. My father readily assented; and it is due to his honoured memory to state that throughout he was an ever-living source of encouragement and inspiration to me. Great physician that he was, he was an even shrewder judge of men; and in 1853, when I was barely five years old, he drew up a will, a copy of which subsequently fell into my hands, in which he directed that I should be sent to England to complete my education. From the days of my infancy he had formed the idea that education in England would be helpful to me in life. On March 3, 1868, I sailed for England along with my friends, Romesh Chunder Dutt and Behari Lal Gupta.

Before I leave this part of my Reminiscences, relating to my school and college life, it may not perhaps be out of place to refer to a lesson which I learnt then and which I have practised through life with great advantage to myself. I was taught when still quite a boy the need of taking regular and daily exercise. My father took a personal interest in this part of my education, for, being a doctor, he realized that health is the basis of all success in life. We had an akra (Indian gymnasium) in our own house with a palwan (trained Indian gymnast) to teach us the various forms of Indian athletic exercises. We attended the gymnasium daily with the regularity with which we attended our schools; and one of my brothers, Captain Jitendranath Banerjea, who took to his exercises with great ardour, was able to hold his own against almost any athlete, and had the reputation of being the strongest man among the Bengalees. I have often thought of his wonderful physical strength, and it has always struck me that, however much he might have been indebted to the training he had given himself, there must have been a basis, an original fund of physical stamina, to account for it.

For more than three generations early marriage was unknown in our family. My ancestors were not reformers, but rigid orthodox Brahmins; and, strangely enough, it was this orthodoxy which re-acted upon their domestic institutions and prevented early marriage in the family. Coming from one of the highest Kulin families, it was difficult for them to secure suitable husbands for their marriageable daughters from amongst men of the same social