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Asutosh was strong in a strength of memory, of marshalling of legions in the domain of fact : his being flowed in an equable, restrained, disciplined, channel—a clear, pellucid stream with the back-washes of diplomacy well-hidden from view : his fights were with weapons forged in the armoury of the adversary and he himself never disdained to don the uniform of the master whom he castigated and chastised as only a Brahmin versed in the strategies, old and new, can. A mathematical precision, a consistently continued march along high-ways and by-ways was his : he knew when to strike : he knew how to sharpen the weapons and how to use them : and when he struck, he struck as with a sledge-hammer. The enemy was stunned into defeat. Who can ever forget how the skilled generalissimo of the University forces had docked, ticketed and labelled every one of his lieutenants and privates, and called them up to fill their places in the fateful hours of strife? There was not a single distinguished graduate in Bengal whom he did not know by face and name—whom he had not cared to befriend and counsel—and to pull by the legs on occasion : and not a day passed when the sanctum of the Russa Road house was not trodden by the feet of pilgrim-academicians, and when the atmosphere there was not charged with loving kindness for some and blasting irony for others. For Sir Asutosh was nothing if not an accurate judge of ‘men’ and ‘manikins’ and to each variety he dealt out his gifts of forceful comradeship and scorning pity in appropriate measure. There was not the minutest nook in the spacious domains of the University, post-graduate and under-graduate with which he was not familiar : and he assayed his task of educational reconstruction with a mastery of details that was almost ‘uncanny’ and a vision of the Ideal that was almost prophetic. His soul was wrapt up in the coils of manly education for the upper and middle classes : and knowing as he did that Gokhale’s dream of universalising elementary education among the broad
