Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/46

 he stood very high in his profession, he won the esteem and love of all, by his affability, kind behaviour, and sympathy for the afflicted and poor. He visited them gratis; and often supplied them with medicines from his own dispensary without charging them anything. There are many anecdotes illustrating his liberality, one of them being as follows. Once a prescription written by him was brought to his dispensary to be made up. It ended with the words “a cartload of straw.” He meant that with the medicine the straw should be supplied. The public at first made it a matter of wondering what the patient would do with straw. At length they asked Kali Charan to explain himself, and he said, “On going to his house, I found that the thatch had given way, and that it should be instantly repaired, otherwise, in spite of all the medicines he might take, he would die of exposure, and so I thought of sending him, along with the medicine, a cartload of straw.” What wonder that the man who gave so much thought to the wants of the needy, would be loved by all? Whenever he stepped into a house, the children in it welcomed him with a shout of joy. We here give a translation of what the poet, Dinabandhu Mitra, said about this good man’s sympathy with the youth of his time:

“Sweet was his nature, and like honey were his words. The young regarded him as their own, and to them he gave his heart. He and they mixed as milk and water.”

Radhabilash and Sriprasad, like Ramtanu, were educated in Mr David Hare’s school in Calcutta. Sriprasad, having gained scholastic distinctions himself, undertook the noble work of spreading the light of knowledge among the rising generation in his own city. He opened a school for them in his house, and himself imparted to them instruction. About this, Dewan Kartik Chandra Rai says,