Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/41

Rh he pariicularly attached himself; and the almost brotherly friendship that sprang between them remained unclouded till 1895, when Namjoshi closed his brilliant career without leaving the wherewithal to perform his funeral ceremony.

Another man, not less useful, joined them soon after. Vaman Shivram Apte, the celebrated lexicographer had earned in his college career high repute as an accomplished scholar and immediately on passing his M. A. examination had been engaged temporarily as Head Master in a Mission School. He tried his best to get a very good post in the Educational Department. But such is the rigidity of red-tape, that he was offered the modest post of an assistant master in an Anglo-Vernacular school. When the founders of the New English School heard this, they at once approached Mr. Apte and secured his services for the school as its Superintendent. The choice was most appropriate. Mr. Apte fully justified his selection for the post by the diligent and thorough manner in which he discharged his duties. He had in him the school-master's instinct, which taken at its best means a strict but temperate sense of discipline, patience with ignorance, system in exposition, attention to minute details and a readiness to plod unwearied through the dull monotony of school-life.

The Vernacular newspapers in Western India were, in those days mostly conducted by political dilettanti and self-seeking business-men. They therefore could not be expected to properly serve the cause of the public. The only important exceptions were The Indu-Prakash, the Dnyana-Prakash, the Native Opinion and the Subodh Patrika. These, out of the 77 newspapers conducted by