Page:Twelve men of Bengal in the nineteenth century (1910).djvu/157

Rh than my sincere wish for your future prosperity, and the expression of the feeling of warm friendship and esteem which you have inspired in myself, and in those Political Officers who have had the pleasure and advantage of your acquaintance in Central India."

Abdul Latif, freed at last after so many years' service from all official duties, was able from this time onward to devote his whole time to the causes he had so much at heart. During thirty-six years' service he had only been absent from duty for four months on sick leave—a splendid record that few servants of the Crown could equal. On his retirement from government service he was granted a special pension on the generous scale of 600 Rs. a month. He had been decorated two years previously with the companionship of the Order of the Indian Empire and in 1887 the year of the Jubilee of the Queen-Empress the title of Nawab Bahadur was conferred upon him. This is the highest Indian title to which a Muhammadan can attain and its bestowal upon Abdul Latif was universally recognised as a fitting and crowning honour to the services he had rendered, not only to Government but to his own fellow countrymen of all castes and creeds. For six years longer he was enabled to continue his ceaseless activities, never flagging in his zeal for the welfare of his co-religionists and enjoying to the full the unmistakable signs