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A NATION IN MAKING

It was the last word that I heard him say. Was it uttered with a prophet's prevision, in unconscious response to a voice sounding in the depths of his soul, that he and I were to meet no more on this side of the grave? It is now over fifty years since then, but the incident remains graven on my memory as a precious treasure. Father and son, we parted for ever—I on my long journey onwards in that strenuous life beset with the strangest vicissitudes, and he back to the old home and to my sorrowing mother, to console her as best he could. We parted, never again to meet, myself retaining through life a more than filial affection and reverence for a father who more than any human being had contributed to my up-building. His disinterestedness, his sympathy for the poor, his abhorrence of sordid means, have left an abiding impression on me, and have strengthened the roots of that filial piety which is one of the cardinal virtues of the Hindu. All this may seem to be high-strung sentiment to the European reader, but to the Hindu it is natural and represents the spontaneous outflow of the soul.

In those days a trip to England seemed to our people to be even more perilous than a voyage to the North Pole. Things were much worse still in the days of Ram Mohun Roy, and his biographer tells us that Dwarakanath Tagore's house, from which the Raja started for his ship, was filled with an eager crowd of visitors who had thronged to have their last look at one whom they believed they were never again to see alive. Our attitude has now greatly changed; and it is one of many signs of the transformation that has taken place within the last fifty years.

The sea-voyage was thoroughly enjoyed by us. None of us was sea-sick, and we had a good deal to see in the various ports where the vessel touched. We arrived at Southampton after a voyage of nearly five weeks. Mr. W. C. Bonnerjea, who had been written to by Mr. Monomohan Ghose, met us at Southampton and took us to London. He put us up at a boarding-house in Barnard Street, near University College, London. After a short stay there, we settled down in our respective quarters and applied ourselves in right earnest to the work that lay before us. I lived near Hampstead Heath, as a pupil in the family of Mr. Talfourd Ely, a teacher of Latin in University Collegiate School, London. I greatly benefited by my stay in his family. It was a happy English middle-class home, and it impressed me with the clean, orderly, methodical lives of the English middle-class. There was an