Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/256



N studying the history of Calcutta it is the personal element that lays the strongest hold on the imagination; the glimpses that are caught of lives full of incident, and often of romance, are so suggestive, that they make one long to pierce the dark shadows that time has cast over all but the few prominent figures who rise high enough above their fellows to catch the light thrown backwards by history. In some few cases it is possible to piece together a chapter in a life, of the earlier portion of which no record remains, but of which the finis was written on a Calcutta tombstone which has long since crumbled to dust.

One such fragment of a life-story tells of Aaron Upjohn, who, though one of the humblest