Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/25

Rh in his father's library impressed him more. One book particularly attracted his fancy. He had heard his father reading the sonorous periods of Bana's Kadamhari and believing the book to be no more difficult than the holy Sanskrit verses he was set to recite every evening, he went up to his father and asked for the loan of the book. Startled with the request, but unwilling to dispirit his son by a curt refusal Gangadhar-pant promised to give the book on one condition. A knotty problem in Arithmetic was set; Bal was to work it out and have the book. Armed with slate and pencil, Bal waged a relentless war on the problem for an hour and a half and carried off the prize amidst the applause of the proud mother and the loving sister.

This was the first triumph of Bal's life. His poor mother did not live to see others. Her health, naturally delicate, undermined by frequent fasting gave way and she died (1866) before realising an Indian mother's ambition of getting her son married. Sometime later, Bal was sent to school. He jumped from standard to standard and was soon transferred to the Poona High School whence he matriculated in 1872. The rigid formality of the classes, with its accompaniment of church-yard silence utterly disgusted him. The spectacle of mediocre teachers hammering scrappy stuff, styled knowledge into the mediocre brains of students was not calculated to charm a boy to whom reading was under- standing and committing to memory no labour. The race of marks and of rank could never allure him; His unwillingness to take down notes and translations was an enigma to his teachers. He was content that he had learnt the lessons and was quite indifferent to the