Page:Vidyasagar, the Great Indian Educationist and Philanthropist.djvu/96

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

normal school, which had to be abolished after a year and a half for want of a sufficient number of pupils. Differences of opinion on this head as well as on others drove the Pundit to resign the secretaryship in 1869.

A brief account of the noble private library he possessed may be given here. It contained a valuable collection of books, all beautifully bound and arranged with studied care. His friends had free access to it and could take away books home. But some of them never cared to return them and shamelessly denied having taken any, when questioned. Once a rare and useful Sanskrit work, missing from his library, was found exposed to sale in a book-stall. The keeper innocently revealed the name of the seller. This happened to be the very acquaintance of his who had once removed the book but never returned it. Vidyasagar paid down the price demanded and from that time forward never trusted anybody with books. A particular friend of his once begging a loan of some historical works