Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/91

 hour of temptation, are still vivid in our memory. The houses presided over by them were seats of virtue and happiness; and most of those that afterwards distinguished themselves for their philanthropy received their first lessons in universal sympathy in these happy abodes. Pandit Iswara Chandra Vidyasagara, in speaking of one of these (the mother of the friend of his boyhood, Gopal Chandra Ghosh) says: “There is no doubt that Raimani’s love for her son was very great, and I believe that her love for me was no less. In fact, in the whole range of my experience, I have never found one equally loving, kind, courteous and amiable. Her divine image is still enthroned in my heart, and the bare mention of her name awakens the most pleasant recollections. People say I am prepossessed in women’s favour, and I believe they are correct; for he who has personally come under the benign influence of a woman like Raimani cannot help adoring the sex to which she belonged.”

Now a few words about the sanitary condition of Calcutta at the time. The inhabitants of modern Calcutta, with its hygiene and sanitary arrangements, can hardly conceive what a hot-bed of disease it then was. Bad drinking water, with the miasma generated in the filthy sewers, killed its residents in numbers. Besides such acute diseases as cholera and typhoid fever, diarrhoea did its slow but sure work of undermining the vigour of life and making it a burden. Many a robust youth from the Mufasal, on spending a few months here, lost his health, and had to return home to recruit it. The description of the unhealthy condition of Calcutta given by Kartik Chandra Rai, who came to the city some time after Ramtanu, and lodged with him, is as follows:—

“Almost everyone coming to Calcutta for the first time was sure to have his digestive powers greatly injured.