Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/159

 Ramtanu had to suffer at this time. His brother, Radhabilash, had died about four or five years before, and Kesava, the chief breadwinner of the family, was carried off about the time of which we write. His death took place either in 1841 or 1842. He had been ailing for about four years, and was quite prepared to meet his death. His father, too, met the calamity with admirable fortitude and resignation. Knowing that in a few hours, his eldest son, his only prop in old age, was to leave him, he, for the sake of his soul’s welfare, had him carried to the banks of the Ganges. Kesava was in full possession of his senses on his way to the river, and asked that the dust of his father’s feet might be put on his head. The father, unmoved and calm, walked up to the litter and complied with his son’s request. We can easily conceive how the poor old man’s heart bled at the thought that the son in whom all his hopes had been centred was soon to quit the world. But Hindus are fatalists, and Ramkrishna Lahiri bowed before the decree of fate without a murmur.

Both Radhabilash and Kesava died of the malarious fever they had caught in Jessore, the former after suffering only a few months, and the latter after a prolonged illness of four or five years. We must here say a few words about the origin and progress of this fell disease as it broke out in the Jessore district. In the cold season of 1835 and 1836 some 300 inmates of the criminal jail in Jessore were employed in the construction of a road from Jessore to Dacca. For about three months the work went on without anything especial happening, but in March fever of a very virulent kind broke out among the coolies, and, in a day, carried off about 150 of them. It spread so great a dread that the labourers and their overseers refused to remain on the spot any