Page:Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar, a story of his life and work.djvu/69

32 "Well done, my dear boy, may God give you a long life. The love I bestowed on you has not been in vain." The reader may laugh at the story with incredulity; but this is not very incredible. When we study the lives of great men, we find many instances of extraordinary power in every one of them. All talented men, endowed with extraordinary powers of the mind, are known to have given clear indications, in their early years, of their future greatness. The germs of their future eminence put forth their sprouts at an early age, and indicated the place they were to occupy in their after-life. Milton used to say:—"The child shows the man, as morning shows the day."

It is said of the famous Bengali poet, Isvar Chandra Gupta, that when he first came to Calcutta he was only seven or eight years old. Shortly after his arrival, one of his father's acquaintances asked him, one day, how he was faring in Calcutta. The future poet, at once replied in verse, that he was living in Calcutta with mosquitoes in the night and flies in the day.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, the best novel-writer of Bengal, is said to have learnt the Bengali alphabet in one day.

Johnson was known to be the possessor of many qualities. He had a superior memory. One day, when he was only a little boy, and had only begun to read and write, his mother asked him to learn a prayer-book by heart, and leaving the boy