-student tutor of ours was so good that even
the fervent and united wishes of his three pupils were not enough to
cause his absence even for a day. Only once was he laid up with a broken
head when, on the occasion of a fight between the Indian and Eurasian
students of the Medical College, a chair was thrown at him. It was a
regrettable occurrence; nevertheless we were not able to take it as a
personal sorrow, and his recovery somehow seemed to us needlessly swift.

It is evening. The rain is pouring in lance-like showers. Our lane is
under knee-deep water. The tank has overflown into the garden, and the
bushy tops of the Bael trees are seen standing out over the waters. Our
whole being, on this delightful rainy evening, is radiating rapture like
the _Kadamba_ flower its fragrant spikes. The time for the arrival of
our tutor is over by just a few minutes. Yet there is no certainty...!
We are sitting on the verandah overlooking the lane[12] watching and
watching with a piteous gaze. All of a sudden, with a great big thump,
our hearts seem to fall in a swoon. The familiar black umbrella has
turned the corner undefeated even by such weather! Could it not be
somebody else? It certainly could not! In the wide wide world there
might be found another, his equal in pertinacity, but never in this
little lane of ours.

Looking back on his period as a whole, I cannot say that Aghore Babu was
a hard man. He did not rule us with a rod. Even his rebukes did not
amount to scoldings. But whatever may have been his personal merits, his
time was _evening_, and his subject _English_! I am certain that even an
angel would have seemed a veritable messenger of Yama[13] to any Bengali
boy if he came to him at the end of his miserable day at school, and
lighted a dismally dim lamp to teach him English.

How well do I remember the day our tutor tried to impress on us the
attractiveness of the English language. With this object he recited to
us with great unction some lines--prose or poetry we could not tell--out
of an English book. It had a most unlooked for effect on us. We laughed
so immoderately that he had to dismiss us for that evening. He must
have realised that he held no easy brief--that to get us to pronounce in
his favour would entail a contest ranging over years.

Aghore Babu would sometimes try to bring the zephyr of outside knowledge
to play on the arid routine of our schoolroom. One day he brought a
paper parcel out of his pocke