Page:Twelve men of Bengal in the nineteenth century (1910).djvu/170

146 At the age of seven he was entered at the Hindu College, in the foundation of which his grandfather had taken so great an interest twenty eight years before. From the first he distinguished himself, carrying off prizes for English and Mathematics several years in succession. Among his school fellows he proved himself a born leader. In the playground he was continually inventing new games, which he taught the other boys who entered with enthusiasm into the parts that Keshub assigned to them. Magic and juggling were his especial boyish delights and he himself acquired considerable dexterity in the juggler's art. Quiet and reserved, he hid even in his young days great force of character beneath a retiring manner, and amongst young companions, whose morals were far from beyond reproach, he kept himself pure and straight. For immorality and falsehood he always had the greatest aversion and contempt. A keen student, he devoted by far the greater portion of his time to his studies and to such effect did he apply himself that at the age of fourteen he was in the first senior class of the School Department of the Hindu College. Unfortunately his studies were interrupted by his transference to the Metropolitan College on its inception in 1853, but though started under such promising auspices that college did not fulfil its expectations, and in the following year those boys who had left the Hindu College in order to join it