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168 LIFE OF BABU RAM GOPAL CHOSE. part with everything he had, even the last cloth ora his back, to pay his debts than to defraud his creditors? by such mean trickeries. On another occasion, says Babu Koilash, a rich man lent him a loan* of a lac of rupees without taking any security from| him whatever. The creditor's friends admonished hiirif for his doing so, but he coolly said that Ram Gopal' would on no account break his promises, even if Heaven? were to fall. Such in -brief is a summary ofhismerl cantile life, for we have not been able to collect facts? to throw more light on the subject. Amidst the arduous and difficult duties of his commercial life, he was as enthusiastic and persevere ing in his literary and oratorical culture as he had been while a student. In political agitation he was the fore- most and the most worthy mouth-piece of the Hindu community. And in the field of Indian Journalism of his time he was its . moving and guiding spirit. Such was his ardent and genuine love of literature that, when he was a mere clerk in Mr. Joseph's Finn, he used to come regularly, after the office hours, to the Hindu College and take exercise on dictation along with other boys under a distinguished teacher, Mr. G. F. Speede. CHAPTER III. HIS LITERARY AND POLITICAL CAREER. Mr. Derozio, it is said, after his dismissal from the Hindu College for his so-called iconoclastic principles and views, established a Debating Club called the "Academic Institution," for the improvement of his pupils. This Club was to Ram Gopal what the "Oxford Club" has been to many an English orator. Here he learnt and practised the art of oratory in which he after- wards became a perfect master. Besides these, he and his other educated friends established an "Epistolary