Page:A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities Vol 1.djvu/22

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ANECDOTES.
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Cuttack, even the poorest among them. He used to say the poorest deserved the greatest attention.

2. He was a very hospitable man, and kept an open table to which even the best men of Calcutta society did not hesitate to attend at times. He was kind and courteous to all.

3. He was a man of strong passions, and slander was very wide-mouthed against his character. He used to express his greatest regret to me that he could not control his passions. He knew the wrong, but still the wrong pursued. I used to give him religious and moral advice to the best of my power.

Babu Mohendra Nath Bose, the Small Cause Court Judge of Narail, and the cousin of Rajah Degumber says, in connexion with this anecdote, that Raja Degumber was somewhat rough in exterior, but at heart he was a very kind-hearted man.

4. He used always to narrate to me (Babu Raj Narain) the great opposition he met with to his theory of the cause of the epidemic fever in Bengal from the other members of the Epidemic Fever Commission, especially the medicals among them; but a layman as he was, his views were at last adopted by Government. As a proof of the truth of his theory, he used to instance his native village of Konenugger, the climate of which improved on its drainage being properly attended to. With reference to the said opposition, he used to remark that the English were rather an intellectually dull nation. He also used to say that no nation is so selfish as the English.

5. He was a spiritualist. Spiritualism was his religion. Such was his him belief in spiritualism, that he used to say that, in the future world, he will dine with his friends exactly as he did here, but, of course, on ethereal food. When one of his grand-sons was providentially saved from falling down from the top of his house, he said that his departed father Grish Chundra saved him.