Page:A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities Vol 1.djvu/124

HIS BIRTH, PARENTAGB, AND EDUCATION. US Jardine Skinner & Co., who had been attacked with cholera of the deadliest type and given up by the best physicians of the -city, both Native and Euro- pean. He was equally strong in the diagnosis and prognosis of diseases. A curious feature in his profes- sional practice was that he never sought patients but was sought for. The faith which he inspired in his medical skill among all classes of natives, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, was so . unbounded that his* very presence was considered half cure. Indeed the poor, who could not afford to call in European physi- cians, felt that if they could secure Durga Churn's presence, they secured all that human knowledge and skill could effect." (Vide Hindoo Patriot, 21st Febru- ary, 1870.) Babu Surendra Nath, who has inherited the father's qualities of energy and devotion to work, was born at Calcutta in November 1848. Babu Durga Churn had five sons, of whom Babu Surendra Nath Is the second. In his early youth, he was sent to 3 patshalla at Patuldanga where he acquired a rudimen- .tary knowledge of Bengali and arithmetic ; and at the age of seven, he took his admission into the Doveton College where he studied with diligence. The Doveton Institution consisted then, as it does now for the most part, of European and Eurasian boys, and when he joined this School he had just learnt the English al- phabet Babu Surendra Nath Banerjee never had a private tutor except such help as he could occasion- ally derive from a friend who used to live with the family, and he tells us that he learnt the language more through the ear than with the aid of the Gram- mar and the Dictionary. When he went up for the Entrance Examination, he had only learnt Lennie's Grammar, and his knowledge of Highley, the stan- dard Grammar of these days, did not extend beyond the positive degree. In 1863 he matriculated in the Calcutta University in the first division, having taken