one short year. With him boys never felt that they were confined in the limit of a teaching class; they seemed to have their access to everywhere. They would go with him to the forest when in the spring the sal trees were in full blossom and he would recite to them his favourite poems, frenzied with excitement. He used to read to them Shakespeare and even Browning,—for he was a great lover of Browning,—explaining to them in Bengali with his wonderful power of expression. He never had any feeling of distrust for boys' capacity of understanding; he would talk and read to them about whatever was the subject in which he himself was interested. He knew that it was not at all necessary for the boys to understand literally and accurately, but that their minds should be roused, and in this he was always successful. He was not like other teachers, a mere vehicle of text-books. He made his teaching personal, he himself was the source of it, and therefore it was made of life stuff, easily assimilable by the living human nature. The real reason of his success was his intense interest in life, in ideas, in everything around him, in the boys who came in contact with him. He had his inspiration not
Page:Personality (Lectures delivered in America).djvu/161
MY SCHOOL
141
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Personality_%28Lectures_delivered_in_America%29.djvu/page161-1024px-Personality_%28Lectures_delivered_in_America%29.djvu.jpg)