l work, he said, had only just begun.

A SOCIAL GATHERING

At the Social Gathering held on the 16th December 1915, in the compound
of the Calcutta Presidency College, to meet him after his highly
successful tour through Europe, America and Japan, Dr. Bose spoke as
follows:--

He said that it was his rare good fortune to have been amply rewarded
for the hardships and struggles that he had gone through by the generous
and friendly feelings of his colleagues and the love and trust of his
pupils. He would say a few words regarding his experience in the
Presidency College for more than three decades, which he hoped would
serve to bring all who loved the Presidency College--present and past
pupils and their teachers--in closer bonds of union. He would speak to
them what he had learnt after years of patient labour, that the
impossible became possible by persistent and determined efforts and
adherence to duty and entire selflessness. The greatest obstacle often
arises out of foolish misunderstanding of each other's ideals, such as
the differing points of view, first of the Indian teacher, then of his
western colleague, and last but not least, the point of view of the
Indian pupils themselves. In all these respects his experience had been
wide and varied. He had both been an undergraduate and a graduate of the
Calcutta University with vivid realization of an Indian student's
aspirations; he had then become a student of conservative Cambridge and
democratic London. And during his frequent visits to Europe and America
he had become acquainted with the inner working of the chief
universities of the world. Finally he had the unique privilege of being
connected with the Presidency College for thirty-one years, from which
no temptation could sever him. He had the deepest sense of the sacred
vocation of the teacher. They may well be proud of a consecrated
life--consecrated to what? To the guidance of young lives, to the making
of men, to the shaping and determining of souls in the dawn of their
existence, with their dreams yet to be realised.

Education in the West and in the East showed how different customs and
ways might yet express a common ideal. In India the teacher was, like
the head of a family, reverenced by his pupils so deeply as to show
itself by touching the feet of their master. This in no servile act if
we come to think of it; since it is the expression of the pupils' desire
for his master's blessings, called down