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on the morning of July 26, my son died. I had some idea that the meeting would not pass off quietly and that there would be opposition offered to the establishment of the Association. I made up my mind, despite my personal sorrow and with the full concurrence of my wife, that I should attend the inaugural meeting. No one at the meeting knew anything at all about my bereavement, though it became widely known on the following day. This is not the only time that I have had to perform_a public duty under the weight of a great personal bereavement. My dearly beloved wife died on December 23, 1911; on the 26th I attended the meeting of the Indian National Congress of that year. and, in the absence of the gentleman entrusted with the duty, | had to propose the election of the President, Pundit Bishen Narayan Dhur, about whose public career J had only a very general idea.

The Indian Association supplied a real need. It soon focused the public spirit of the middle class, and became the centre of the leading representatives of the educated community of Bengal. Mr. Ananda Mohan Bose was elected Secretary, Babu Akshay Kumar Sirker, who has since made a name for himself as a Bengalee writer, was appointed Assistant Secretary. I held no office, but I was one of the most active members of the Association. In view of my removal from Government service, I kept myself in the background. but 1 worked zealously for the Association, knowing no higher pleasure or duty, and bent upon realizing through this institution the great ideals which even at.that early period had taken definite possession of my mind. They may be set forth as follows: (1) The creation of a strong body of public opinion in the country; (2) the unification of the Indian races and p2oples upon the basis of common political interests and aspirations; (3) the promotion of friendly feeling between Hindus and Mohamedans; and, lastly, the inclusion of the masses in the great public movements of the day. T worked for these ideals; others have worked for them too, for they were in the air, and the possession and property of every thoughtful and patriotic Indian; and now, after nearly fifty years of public life, I have the gratification of feeling that, if they have not been wholly realized, they are within a measurable distance of accomplishment. The Indian Association materially helped to promote these ideals. They were the natural and normal development of the efforts of the great men of the past, under the new conditions created by the closer touch of our best minds with the political thought and activities of the West.