Page:Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar, a story of his life and work.djvu/496

Rh extraordinary success was due to Vidyasagar's able management and tact in the selection of teachers. He never entertained European professors. He selected for his professors Indians of most solid attainments, whose names, particulary that of Babu Prosanna Kumar Lahiri, should be perpetuated along with the Institution.

Vidyasagar had great abilities at management of educational institutions. We have seen how he introduced various reforms into the Sanskrit College and made it eminently successful. He had one great merit; whatever he handled, he applied himself heart and soul to its improvement. When Vidyasagar took over the management of the Metropolitan Institution on his own shoulders, he devoted to it all his energy, attention, and experience, and soon brought about many reforms, which raised it to such conspicuous eminence. He paid the teachers of his college and schools handsomely, for he never tried to profit himself by the income of these institutions. We have already said that he was always averse to infliction of corporal punishment to school boys, and he interdicted such punishment altogether from his institutions. Mention has been made before how he compelled one of the teachers to retire from his service for disregarding his injunctions in this respect. His instruction to the schoolmasters was that they should never resort to bodily chastisement, but try to rectify the boys by kind and gentle words and