Personally I have known Mr. Chitta Ranjan Das from the days of his youth. His father, the late Babu Bhuban Mohan Das was a friend of mine. Bhuban Mohan was a well-known Attorney of the Calcutta High Court. For some time he was connected also with Bengalee journalism. As editor, first, of the _Brahmo Public Opinion_, and subsequently of the _Bengal Public Opinion_, he made a very high position for himself among Bengalee journalists. His style was very simple, and he spoke with a directness that was rather rare in our more successful English weeklies of those days. Babu Bhuban Mohan was a sincere patriot, and though like good many English educated Bengalees of his generation, he threw himself heart and soul into the Brahmo Samaj Movement, in his personal life and more particularly in his dealings with his Hindu relatives, he belonged to the old Hindu type, and spent whatever he earned,--and he earned a lot--for the support of his poorer relatives. Indeed he spent upon them more than his finances allowed and consequently got involved in heavy liabilities that forced him, during the closing years of his professional life, to take refuge in the Insolvency Court. Chitta Ranjan was educated, I think, in the London Missionary College, Bhowanipore; and subsequently in the Presidency College, Calcutta whence he took his B.A. degree and went to England to qualify himself for the Indian Civil Service. I do not remember if he actually competed for the I.C.S. He joined the Inns of Court and was called to the Bar in the early Nineties. Chitta Ranjan gave considerable promise of exceptional literary and oratorical gifts even when he was a student in the Presidency College, Calcutta. While in England he made some political speeches, in connection I think, with the Electioneering Campaign of Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, and some of those speeches were very favourably noticed by the English and the Indian Press. Upon his return home, and within a short time of his joining the Calcutta Bar, he took upon himself the responsibility of all his father's debts; an act that forced him at the very commencement of his professional career, to join his father in seeking the protection of the Insolvency Court. It was not only a filial duty, but a point of honour, with Chitta. Ranjan to share this indignity with his father. He was very seriously handicapped, both in his professional and in his public life, by this insolvency. But for it, Chitta Ranjan would have long ago publicly thrown himself into all our political and patriotic movements and won the position of leadership to which he was entitled by his capacity and his devoted love for his country.