Page:Report on public instruction in the lower provinces of the Bengal presidency (1850-51).djvu/24

xii alike of his teachers and his class-fellows, poor Ombica Churn Ghose! I saw his eye lighten last year, when from this chair I exhorted you to exert yourselves to maintain the honor of your College, and assuredly I reckoned that he would not have failed to do his part. He has been taken from us; it has pleased God that the promise of his early years, should not ripen to bear its mature fruits; but though he is dead, his name and memory live among us. I noticed with melancholy pleasure the monumental tablet your kindly recollection of your late companion has placed on the walls of your College, and by which, while seeking to record his merits, you have also done honor to yourselves. Look on it not merely as a memorial of departed worth, but as a pledge that you will endeavour to take him for an example; that you, who have known how to appreciate his intellectual pre-eminence and his moral excellence, will seek to emulate his industry, his docility, his virtuous disposition; when you feel tempted to act in any way of which you know that he would have been ashamed, pause and reflect, that his eulogium be not turned to your condemnation.

"And you, Omesh Chunder Dutt, whom I have so often had occasion to mark out for praise, be assured of this that not even in that moment, which you probably thought the proudest in your life, when from this place I hailed you as the first scholar of your year throughout Bengal, not even then did I look on you with so kindly a feeling or so hearty a desire to serve you, as when I heard of your affectionate kindness to your dying friend and competitor; when I learned how carefully you had tended him in his malignant disorder, undeterred by the terror of contagion, which is often found powerful enough to break through stronger natural ties than those which bound you to your departed friend. I doubt not that your own approving conscience has already amply rewarded you: for it is in the plan of the All-wise contriver of the world that every sincere act of kindness to a fellow creature carries with it its own peculiar inimitable joy: but it is also my pleasing right to tell you that your behaviour in this matter has not been unobserved, and that by it you have raised yourself higher in the good opinion of those, whose good opinion I believe you are desirous of deserving. May such examples multiply among us! May we have many such students as Ombica Churn Ghose! May your conduct one toward another be so marked with brotherly love, that it shall cease to call for particular notice or special commendation. Let these be the fruits of knowledge, and who shall then venture to say that a blessing is not upon the tree."