Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1.djvu/28

 whole-heartedly into the work of this little, straggling Samaj and soon strengthened it and spread its beneficent influence for social and religious reform among the educated public and particularly the student section of the town. The vicissitudes of fortune of an unwelcome Theistic worker amid evangelical Christian surroundings took Mr. Venkata Ratnam: away to another latitude in 1899, even because his influence was proved to have been too strong and sound and sober! The impress left behind elicited, however, even from the Head with whom he had to part company an unmeasured appreciation of the "conscientious and high-minded gentleman" in whom was lost "not only a colleague but a personal friend." Later, too, when the Principalship of Pittapur Rajah’s College fell vacant in 1904, the same old authority, the Rev. C. W. A. Clarke,, felt constrained thus to express himself, suo moto, to the College Council at Cocanada: "In my eighteen years’ experience of Indian education, I have not met a better teacher than Mr. Venkata