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'Last year, at one of the public meetings held in Upper India for your liberty, I heard a Kashmiri pundit, a man of years and honours, but incapable of construing one word of English into his mother-tongue—heard this grave and elderly man sob while he referred to your imprison- ment. Tears, salt and bitter tears choked his utterance as he cried, "What have they done with our dearest brother? Our Surendranath is in jail." And a like passion of agony was wrung from every Indian heart, and universal mourning was observed throughout the land.'

The late Ananda Mohan Bose, referring to the political consequences of my imprisonment, thus observed in the Report of the Indian Association for 1883:

'That "good cometh out of evil" was never more fully illustrated than in this notable event. It has now been demonstrated, by the universal outburst of grief and indignation which the event called forth, that the people of the different Indian provinces have learnt to feel for one another; and that a common bond of unity and fellow-feeling is rapidly being established among them. And Babu Surendranath Banerjea has at least one consolation, that his misfortune awakened, in a most marked form, a manifestation of that sense of unity among the different Indian races, for the accomplishment of which he has so earnestly striven and not in vain.'

Babu Tarapada Banerjee of Krishnagar started the idea of a National Fund as a memento of my imprisonment. It was a fruitful conception, for since then other national funds have been started for national purposes. The amount collected came to about Rs. 20,000; and the subscribers at a meeting decided to make it over to the Indian Association of Calcutta for the promotion of political work. The amount is small, but it has been found helpful to have a permanent fund at our disposal, a sort of nucleus drawing to it funds from other sources and inspiring public workers with the belief that the sinews of war would never be wanting. This fund was most useful in the anti-Partition agitation, when the attitude of Government and the doctrine of the 'settled fact', paraded ad nauseam, had the effect of deterring our wealthy men from contributing to a cause with which in their heart of hearts they sympathized, but which they dared not openly support for fear of incurring the displeasure of the authorities.

It is right and proper that I should stop here for a moment to pay a tribute to the memory of an old friend and co-worker, Babu Tarapada Banerjee. For years together he was the most prominent