Page:Vidyasagar, the Great Indian Educationist and Philanthropist.djvu/67

 As Inspector of Schools Vidyasagar was called on to submit periodical reports of the institutions under him. A persistent tradition asserts that Mr. Young once told him to handle facts and figures in a way to present them in the most favourable light. He is said to have given nothing save a plain, unvarnished statement.

In the summer of 1857, again, when the Sepoys on a sudden mutinied and shook the authority of the Rulers to its foundation, the Sanskrit College was urgently requisitioned for quartering troops. Vidyasagar closed it for a few days and made over the building to the military authorities. This was done to safeguard the interests of the State and meet a political emergency. No slight was intended. Yet Mr. Young required him to explain why the college had been closed without his permission! Perhaps he expected the pundit to act like the dutiful porter at an out-of-the-way railway station in India, figuring in one of Kipling's after-dinner yarns. This man