Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 1.djvu/31

 came by a unanimous vote, before time, after the very first year and at the instance of the very agencies that had opposed hie introduction in the beginning. Yes; such is the irresistible charm of Mr. Venkata Ratnam’s personality. Such has all along been his systematic career—to conquer hate by Jove. In fact, wherever he settled, he was at first dreaded and reviled as an unsparing denouncer of individual vices and national iniquities : nay, his very life amongst people was a silent rebuke to every species of unworthiness. But, in course of time, the strength of his character would sliance all antipathy into abasement, admiration, assimilation. The completion of the first decade was observed as a festive event all-round: and the ‘Address’ of warm felicitations from the Staff extolled "the expansion of the Institution, in all its departments, to nearly three times what it was when you assumed charge and the more than tenfold increase in the College Department alone as, "by itself, an eloquent testimony to the earnest care, fatherly solicitude and pious