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figure in the public life of Krishnagar, the supporter and sometimes the inaugurator of public movements in that ancient town. His death was a heavy loss to the national party, and it will be long before a successor appears, wielding his influence and fired with his courage and enthusiasm. It is not always that a public man, living in a provincial town, is able to rise to fame and distinction, or acquire for himself a name beyond his parochial or local limits. But the history of nation-building in Bengal would be an inadequate record if it omitted to mention the work accomplished by men like Tarapada Banerjee, Ambika Churn Majumder, Baikuntanath Sen, Aswini Kumar Dutt, Anath Bandhu Guha, Ananda Chunder Roy, Kissory Mohan Chowdhury and others. They may not all be known to fame in the same degree; but they have all worked in the national cause in spite of many difficulties and drawbacks, and some have suffered. They have laid their contemporaries under a heavy obligation, which should at least be duly acknowledged by those who were their colleagues.

My term of imprisonment began on May 5, 1883; and I was released on July 4, a great day in the world's history, the day of American Independence, of which my friends took the utmost advantage. I suffered as a 'defender of the faith'. It was quite well known that orthodox Hinduism did not appeal to me, that my ideals were progressive, and that my social life was in conformity with those ideals. That one with my views and convictions should stand forth in defence of the cherished feelings of my orthodox countrymen and should suffer for it, was deemed to be an act of no mean merit. The sentiment was indeed universal. When a great wave of feeling sweeps overs the public mind, it breaks its barriers and rushes into channels beyond its scope. The educated community, restive and uneasy, swayed by the feelings evoked by the Ilbert Bill controversy, and perhaps not unmindful of my own public services, shared the general indignation. My personal friends were grieved and mortified. The sentence of imprisonment seemed to them to be the climax of a wrong done to me. My friend, Mr. B. L. Gupta, was then Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta. As soon as he heard the sentence, he stopped the work of the Court and came straight to the Presidency Jail to see me. Sympathy, so open and undisguised on the part of so high an officer of Government, with its implication of tacit disapproval of the judicial sentence of the highest Court in the land, was the subject of talk and even of public comment. One of the leading newspapers,