Page:A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities Vol 1.djvu/11

2 not a very large fortune from his ancestors who were in tolerably good circumstances, and in the enjoyment of competence only. The immense fortune and the vast landed properties which Babu Degumber afterwards possessed, were the hard-earned, and not the less deserved, fruits of his own labour and not the rich heritage obtained from his ancestors. How he came to acquire this property, how poor Degumber became a rich man, and how, throughout his life, he made an excellent use of his money for the benefit of his countrymen, we shall describe hereafter.

Degumber was fortunate enough in receiving a good education in his youth. His father used to reside in a lodging somewhere in Raja Naba Krishna's Street at Sova Bazar, and boy Degumber was educated in a patshala, and at the age of twelve, took his admission into the school kept by David Hare, the father of English Education in Bengal. He then joined the Hindoo College, and having passed the Senior Scholarship Examination, he left it in search of employment to provide for his family, then consisting of his old father, mother, and his wife, before he was twenty. In 1834 he served as an English teacher of the Nizamut School at Moorshidabad, where in later life he came to play an important part not only as a tutor and Manager of the vast Estates of Raja Kishennath, the husband of the illustrious Moharanee Surnomoyee of Kashim Bazar at Berhampore, but also as a silk-manufacturer and merchant of great enterprise and pluck. The school-mastership in the Nizamut School was not to his liking, and so he left it, and got an employment under the Magistrate and Collector of Rajshaye as head clerk of the Collectorate there, on a salary of Rs. 80 or 100 per mensem. It is said by his few surviving friends that he held the post for a short period of six months only, but it is now impossible to determine with any degree of accuracy why he gave up the appointment. A