for the school course, he gave
up the attempt as hopeless and went on a different tack. He took me
through Kalidas's "Birth of the War-god," translating it to me as we
went on. He also read Macbeth to me, first explaining the text in
Bengali, and then confining me to the school room till I had rendered
the day's reading into Bengali verse. In this way he got me to translate
the whole play. I was fortunate enough to lose this translation and so
am relieved to that extent of the burden of my _karma_.

It was Pandit Ramsarvaswa's duty to see to the progress of our Sanskrit.
He likewise gave up the fruitless task of teaching grammar to his
unwilling pupil, and read Sakuntala with me instead. One day he took it
into his head to show my translation of Macbeth to Pandit Vidyasagar and
took me over to his house.

Rajkrishna Mukherji had called at the time and was seated with him. My
heart went pit-a-pat as I entered the great Pandit's study, packed full
of books; nor did his austere visage assist in reviving my courage.
Nevertheless, as this was the first time I had had such a distinguished
audience, my desire to win renown was strong within me. I returned home,
I believe, with some reason for an access of enthusiasm. As for
Rajkrishna Babu, he contented himself with admonishing me to be careful
to keep the language and metre of the Witches' parts different from that
of the human characters.

During my boyhood Bengali literature was meagre in body, and I think I
must have finished all the readable and unreadable books that there were
at the time. Juvenile literature in those days had not evolved a
distinct type of its own--but that I am sure did me no harm. The watery
stuff into which literary nectar is now diluted for being served up to
the young takes full account of their childishness, but none of them as
growing human beings. Children's books should be such as can partly be
understood by them and partly not. In our childhood we read every
available book from one end to the other; and both what we understood,
and what we did not, went on working within us. That is how the world
itself reacts on the child consciousness. The child makes its own what
it understands, while that which is beyond leads it on a step forward.

When Dinabandhu Mitra's satires came out I was not of an age for which
they were suitable. A kinswoman of ours was reading a copy, but no
entreaties of mine could induce her to lend it to me. She used to ke