extended chastisement was ironically called Nadu-Gopal, that is Gopal's or Krishna's sweetmeat—the sweetmeat being a brick. In fact, two bricks were used, the boy in disgrace having to kneel down on one knee, with his arms outstretched, when a large brick was placed on each arm. If he let one of them fall the bamboo switch fell just as surely on his pate. Even the Welsh-Not, a board that used to be hung round the necks of children in Welsh schools to punish them for using their mother-tongue, was not so humiliating as the Nadu-Gopal. Yet another punishment was that of stinging the naked body of a boy with a kind of nettle—bichuti—much sharper than ours in its venom. These were not the invention of this particular tyrant, but a regular part of the old country school tradition.
Then as to the things taught: the one essential matter to begin with was learning to write the characters—no easy acquirement in Bengali, because of its arabesque and convolute forms. In the old village schools a boy did nothing but write for some years. He began with chalk on the ground itself; then came the reed pen and ink, with a palm leaf for paper. So there was a floor class and a palm-leaf class; and by slow de-
