es was:
"What a splendid head you have!" This detail lingers in my memory
because she, who at home was an enthusiast in her self-imposed duty of
keeping my vanity in check, had impressed on me that my cranium[41] and
features generally, compared with that of many another were barely of a
medium order. I hope the reader will not fail to count it to my credit
that I implicitly believed her, and inwardly deplored the parsimony of
the Creator in the matter of my making. On many another occasion,
finding myself estimated by my English acquaintances differently from
what I had been accustomed to be by her, I was led to seriously worry my
mind over the divergence in the standard of taste between the two
countries!

One thing in the Brighton school seemed very wonderful: the other boys
were not at all rude to me. On the contrary they would often thrust
oranges and apples into my pockets and run away. I can only ascribe this
uncommon behaviour of theirs to my being a foreigner.

I was not long in this school either--but that was no fault of the
school. Mr. Tarak Palit[42] was then in England. He could see that this
was not the way for me to get on, and prevailed upon my brother to allow
him to take me to London, and leave me there to myself in a lodging
house. The lodgings selected faced the Regent Gardens. It was then the
depth of winter. There was not a leaf on the row of trees in front which
stood staring at the sky with their scraggy snow-covered branches--a
sight which chilled my very bones.

For the newly arrived stranger there can hardly be a more cruel place
than London in winter. I knew no one near by, nor could I find my way
about. The days of sitting alone at a window, gazing at the outside
world, came back into my life. But the scene in this case was not
attractive. There was a frown on its countenance; the sky turbid; the
light lacking lustre like a dead man's eye; the horizon shrunk upon
itself; with never an inviting smile from a broad hospitable world. The
room was but scantily furnished, but there happened to be a harmonium
which, after the daylight came to its untimely end, I used to play upon
according to my fancy. Sometimes Indians would come to see me; and,
though my acquaintance with them was but slight, when they rose to leave
I felt inclined to hold them back by their coat-tails.

While living in these rooms there was one who came to teach me Latin.
His gaunt figure with its worn-out clothing seemed n