HIS EDUCATION AND STRUGGLES IN EARLY LIFE. 57 more than a match for the combined strength of the entire planting community of Bengal, — receiv- ed his eleemosynary kind of education in this charity school, and what progress he made therein. But, of this, we are sure, that Hurish Chunder received a scanty education at school which, adverse cir- cumstances compelled him to leave, at the compara- tively early age of fourteen ; and that his real educa- tion commenced afterwards when he entered the arena of the world. On the " broad stage of the world, " where he, afterwards, came to play an ever-memorable part, he first appeared both as a diligent and labori- ous student, and an Omedwar, or a candidate for an appointment in a Government or a mercantile office. When he left school in search of an employment, he begged for a common clerk-ship, but he had the mor- tification to find his school-passport or his merit ridi- culed by the heads of offices. Born of a poor parent, having no influential friend to back him, he at last be- ' took himself to the precarious profession of a writer of petitions, bills and letters, which brought him, no doubt, a stray rupee now and then, but the paltry in- come derived from this source was not enough for his purpose. He had to provide for his family then con- sisting of his old mother, brother and wife ; and the awful fix in which he found himself at this time is thus described by Babu Shumbhoo Chunder Mukherji, the present editor of the Rets and Rayyet, who tempora- rily succeeded Hurish Chunder as editor of thelfindoo Patriot after his death in 1861. Babu Shumbhoo Chun- der heard this doleful story from Hurish Chunder him- self which, we transcribe below, from the Mukherjxe Magazine of 1862. " On one unfortunate day, when he had not a grain of rise in his house for a simple dinner, and the call of nature could not be attended to, he thought, poor soul, of mortgaging a brass plate to buy his. simple fare. It was raining hard and 8
