Page:Shantiniketan; the Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.djvu/46

26 has come to an end of his career of reckless and inconsequential adventures, I know not, but as long as he lived his friends and discoverers were never tired of telling of his deeds and describing with the minutest details his appearance and character. Perhaps his ghost still haunts the corners of the dormitory and the shadow-chequered path of the Sal Avenue.

This characteristic of one side of the School life is vital to the ideals with which the School was started. Education consists, not in giving information which the boys will forget as soon as they conveniently can without danger of failing in their examinations, but in allowing the boys to develop their own characters in the way which is natural to them. The younger the boys are the more original they show themselves to be. It is only when the shadow of a University examination begins to loom over them that they lose their natural freshness and originality, and become candidates for matriculation. When the small boys take up an idea and try to put it into practice then there is always a freshness about it which is spontaneous and full of the joy of real creation. To see them give a circus performance would delight the heart of any man who had not become absolutely blasé.