Page:Shantiniketan; the Bolpur School of Rabindranath Tagore.djvu/66

46 to the football field, hand in hand with the tiny son of one of the teachers, a little boy of three, who chatters away to his big companion on all sorts of subjects.

Bengali boys have also a characteristic attitude of receptivity to spiritual things which makes it possible to trust to the atmosphere of the ashram for the development of the spiritual life. There is, for example, nothing irksome to the boys in the habit of sitting in silence and stillness during the morning and evening periods of silent worship. The result of this is that even the younger boys of our School often find it easier to follow the addresses of the poet than graduate students of Calcutta, who have not had the opportunity of living in such an environment. They are like sensitive instruments which respond to the least influence, and for that reason unkindness or thoughtlessness in one’s dealings with Bengali students often have results apparently far out of proportion to the actual occasion of the hurt. This has been seen recently in the effect of an unsympathetic attitude adopted by many professors in Government and other Colleges towards the students in Calcutta. But this very sensitiveness responds with even greater readiness to kindness and