Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/162

 the urchin went on from one to another, and having the fear of the bamboo rod and Gopal's cruel sugar-plum, and the stinging  to keep him diligent, he learnt in time his three R's, and how to indite letters and read books.

The principle of certain schools in India as in England was that the discipline ought, and was meant, to be hard and penal. There was no notion of making the work a delight or of showing how knowledge enlarged a boy's heart, put him on terms with nature, and gave him control over his own powers and the big world and his fellow-creatures. If a boy played truant he was brought back, tied to bamboo-poles by two of his older fellow-pupils like some miscreant or dangerous criminal. How admirably and helpfully Rabindranath Tagore has made use of the common interest of the boys at his school, converting cruelty into true discipline, we shall hear at the turn of another page.

The sympathy and understanding he has for a youngster's difficulties are to be learnt in his tales. In the story of Fatik, he has made for us a small boy's tragedy, which tells how easy it is for a child to miss happiness when he is sensitive and unfriendly fate cuts across his