Page:Anecdotes of Indian Life.djvu/18

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5

VIDYASAGAR AND AN ARISTOCRAT.

Vidyasagar fills far more space in the folklore of Bengal intended "to point a moral" than any other man of his or of any other time, and that is because he scarcely did anything but that it was out of the common run of doings and somehow or other strikingly superior to them. While he lived, he was the best beloved and revered man in Bengal and among his admirers were gentle and simple, high and low, young and old, and learned and illiterate. The object of veneration of the proudest in the land he never was conscious of the high position he held in society and might be as often seen chatting cheerfully with the rugged day-labourer before his hovel or the dirty booth-keeper by the road side who were the recipients of his large-hearted affection as in the drawing-rooms of palaces whose owner felt honoured by his visit.

It so happened. once that while he sat on a dirty carpet spread for him under the porch of a small grocery shop and was talking to the grocer, a glittering phaeton came driving up and as soon as its young occupant saw Vidyàsàgar, he had