Son.—'Everything is ready there, and if I break up the arrangements and bring him here, most probably the picture won't be nice.'
Mother.—'When you hold to a thing, it is always very difficult to put you back. Do as you like. Only, if I go at all I must go with you. Should there be any blame in it, people would not come forward to censure me; they will then blame you. They will say that a great man like Vidyasagar took his mother to the Paikpara Raj house to have her likeness drawn. Never mind, I will go with you.'
Vidyasagar had the two portraits of his dear parents hung on his walls, and saluted them every morning. It is said, that after the death of his parents, he saw the pictures twice daily, and tears trickled down his breast in incessant torrents as he looked at them.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Great Famine.
In the middle of 1866, Raja Pratap Chandra Sinha of Paikpara was severely ill at Kandi, his ancestral home. When the news reached Vidyasagar, he hastened to Kandi, accompanied with the best native medical practitioner, Dr. Mahendra Lal Sarkar. But the illness grew more serious every day, and at last his life was despaired of. He was removed to Paikpara, where he expired at
