Page:The Autobiography of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore.djvu/70

22 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF and Adult School for ladies who wished to be instructed themselves, or to be trained for teaching others. The Normal School has long been closed, but Keshab's Victoria Institution for Women, with a girls school attached to it, after various vicissitudes, exists to the present day. It was at this time that Keshab and his followers established their Boarding House, called the Bharat Asram. Industrial schools, night schools, and other charitable experiments followed, but in the attempt to do so much at once, failure and disappointment were inevitable. The most important step in Keshab's career was the part taken by him in ascertaining from expert medical opinion the proper and minimum age for the marriage of girls, and legalising Brâhma marriages by getting Act III. of 1872 passed.

Keshab Chandra would now seem to have attained the summit of his ambition. His fondest expectations were realised. He had surrounded himself with a band of devoted followers, some of whom worshipped him as an Avatar with a blind unreasoning faith. Everything seemed to smile upon his path, and a wide field of usefulness and reform lay open before him, when, all of a sudden, a black cloud showed itself on the horizon. This was the marriage of his daughter with the Maharaja of Kuchbehar. I do not propose to enter here upon the merits of the bitter controversy that ensued; suffice