Page:Bengal Celebrities.djvu/142

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[ U3 ] NARENDRA.NATH SEN. Narendranath Sen, the veteran journalist and patriot, is the grandson of the famous lexicographer, Ramkamal Sen, and cousin- german of the great reformer, Kesavchandra Sen. He belongs to a respectable Vaidya family whose original seat was at Garifa on the west bank of the Hugli, but who settled at Colootota, Calcutta, in the last century. Narendranath's father, Harimohan, was an accom- plished writer of English and a man of great force and independence of character. The family is known alike for its devoutness and for the number of able men it has produced. Narendranath has inherited the family excellences in all their fullness- He was born in 1843. Like his grerft cousin, Kesav, he owes most of his learning to private study, having had to leave college very early on account of delicate health. His first impulse to become a writer seems to have been received from his tutor, the well-known journalist, Captain Frank Talmer. Babu Narendranath became an attorney when he was only about nineteen or twenty, and has been in that profession ever since. But it is as a journalist that he is best known and and it is in this capacity that he has done the greatest service to his country, though his patriotic activities have been of the most varied nature. In 186 1, the Indian Mirror was first started as a fortnight- ly. From that time Babu Narendranath has been connected with it. In fact he has been the editor of the paper throughout its whole career, with only short intervals, during which the paper was edited by the late Mr. Monomohan Ghosh, Babu Kesavchandra Sen and Babu Pratapchandra Mazumdar. Before taking up the Mirror, Babu Narendranath had long been in the staff of the Indian Field. Gradually the Mirror became a weekly and then a daily. In 1878 it came out as a broad sheet chiefly through Narendranath's exertions. It was the first daily. English paper