Page:Shantiniketan; the Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.djvu/65

Rh little life had blossomed and left a fragrance behind which would never fade.

Another striking characteristic of the Bengali boy is his genuine affection for little children. The average English boy, if told to take charge of an infant brother, would feel completely miserable, and if asked to carry his baby sister to the annual prize-giving of his own school would feel ready to sink through the floor with shame. But in Bengal wherever one goes one is struck by the fact that the boys are devoted to children and are never tired of nursing them or playing with them. I have seen boys at Shantiniketan spend hours wheeling a perambulator with quite a young child in it for the mere pleasure of having a child to entertain. There is no affectation about it, and this is not a peculiarity of the boys of our School only. Nothing gives the boys of the upper classes at Shantiniketan more pleasure than to be allowed to bring to their class the grandson of the poet, a little boy of four who sits through the period quite quietly and solemnly, with only an occasional diversion if anything interesting is happening near the tree under which the class is being held. And I have often seen one of the biggest boys, on the way