Page:A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities Vol 1.djvu/120

HIS CHARACTER. Ill Nath assures us distinctly, he had no regular meal a day and slept at night for a short time of three hours only. With the dawn of day, Shyama Churn rose from his bed, took his morning ablution, and a few chapaties prepared the night before, and having done his duties in the Calcutta Madrassa, he walked to Dum Dum to teach some European Military gentlemen residing there and had to come back to town to attend to his duties at the Fort William College. With the setting sun, his Herculean task for the day came to a close, and poor Shyama Churn had to come back to his lodg- ing, to prepare his own food with his hand, then to partake of it and after taking alittle rest, read his books and went to bed at midnight. In this wise he struggl- ed on with poverty till at last he conquered it. Nurtured in the lap of cold adversity, he knew what a misfortune it was to he poor, and his sympathy for the helpless and the distressed was as strong as ever. When after a hard struggle in life, fortune smil- ed on him, he spent money like water to benefit the poor. In his own native village as well as in his resi- dence at Taltolah in Calcutta he was pretty often seen taking a rupturous delight in feeding the poor and giv- ing pecuniary assistance to the helpless widows, or- phans, and students. To the learned Sanskrit pundits and Moulovis of Bengal, from whom he received a grat- uitous education in classics, his respect and bounty were unstinted. Year after year he spent large sums of money in helping them without making any fuss about it He was courteous and affable to all and his amiabi- lity, his urbanity and suavity of character won the res- pect of all classes of people. And he was a gentleman in the highest sense of the term. Possessed of a strong physique and robust frame of body and mind, he was a voracious eater, more than half a seer of rice with a pro- portionate quantity of vegetables, dal, and milk being necessary for his mid-day dinner. We had the honor of serving under him as the head-master of his English