Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/50

thereby sustain. I could not see my way to complying with this request, though I was prepared to give him an additional hour for teaching in the Metropolitan Institution. I tendered my resignation, which he accepted.

A month later, in April, Principal Robertson of the Free Church College invited me to join that institution as Professor of English Literature. I accepted the offer and continued to be Professor in the Free Church College till 1885, when I resigned owing to the growing demands, on my time and attention, of the educational institution that I had founded.

In 1882, I took over charge of a school, teaching up to the Matriculation standard, known as the Presidency Institution. It became the nucleus of the Ripon College, but at the time when I took it over it had only two hundred students on its rolls. I thoroughly reorganized the school. It was affiliated to the Intermediate standard, and eventually to the B.A. and B.Sc. and the B.L. standards, of the Calcutta University. With Lord Ripon’s permission, obtained on the eve of his departure, I named the institution after him, and it is now known as the Ripon College. It is a fully-equipped, first-grade college, with a high school attached to it with nearly 2,500 students ail told. It has been provided with a building of its own, at a cost of nearly Rs. 1,50,000. I have divested myself of all proprietary rights over this institution and have made it over to the public under a body of trustees created for the purpose.

I was engaged in the active work of teaching from 1875 to 1912, that is, for a period of nearly thirty-seven years. On being elected to the Imperial Legislative Council, in February, 1913, it became necessary for me to travel frequently between Delhi and Calcutta, and I had to withdraw from my professorial duties. Great as is the importance I attach to my political work, to which I shall refer fully later on, far more interesting to me personally were my duties as a teacher.

it was with the greatest reluctance that I ceased to be a teacher, for I loved the students and I rejoiced in their company. I said on one occasion during the Swadeshi agitation, ‘If I have contributed to the up-building of student life, the students in their turn have made me what I am. If I have inspired them with the spirit of service, they in their turn have rejuvenated me and filled me with the ardour of youth.’ I have grown young in their company and by daily contact with them I have retained even amid advancing