Page:Stories of Bengalee life - Prabhat Kumar Mukerji.pdf/40

28 The Darogas left, very much disappointed.

Subodh Babu then began to pull at his hooka vigorously and thought—"Poor boys!—They have done me a very good turn indeed. By this time the news is all over Calcutta with the morning papers, I believe. This will go a long way towards the fulfilment of my desire."

Subodh was right. Within three days the whole country rang with the news. The vernacular papers, copying the item from their English contemporaries (without acknowledgment) wrote long leading articles in terms not exactly complimentary to Subodh Babu. Some editors wrote—"Such traitors to the country should forthwith be placed outside the pale of society." One facetious writer published a poem entitled—"The purification of Subodh Babu." In it he said that cow-dung and water was a highly purifying agent of sin. The contamination resulting to Subodh Babu from shaking hands with Mr. Fuller at the durbar, has been washed clean with cow-dung and water. Prominent mention of Subodh Babu was made in the columns of the Englishman and other Anglo-Indian dailies also. These papers wrote—"There is no doubt that at the present moment there are thousands of educated natives in the New Province who are truly loyal to the British Government; but they dare not give