One noon the clouds had gathered thickly. Rejoicing in the grateful shade of the cloudy midday rest-hour, I lay prone on the bed in my inner room and wrote on a slate the imitation _Maithili_ poem _Gahana kusuma kunja majhe_. I was greatly pleased with it and lost no time in reading it out to the first one I came across; of whose understanding a word of it there happened to be not the slightest danger, and who consequently could not but gravely nod and say, "Good, very good indeed!" To my friend mentioned a while ago I said one day: "A tattered old manuscript has been discovered while rummaging in the _Adi Brahma Samaj_ library and from this I have copied some poems by an old Vaishnava Poet named Bhanu Singha;"[39] with which I read some of my imitation poems to him. He was profoundly stirred. "These could not have been written even by _Vidyapati_ or _Chandidas_!" he rapturously exclaimed. "I really must have that MS. to make over to Akshay Babu for publication." Then I showed him my manuscript book and conclusively proved that the poems could not have been written by either _Vidyapati_ or _Chandidas_ because the author happened to be myself. My friend's face fell as he muttered, "Yes, yes, they're not half bad." When these Bhanu Singha poems were coming out in the _Bharati_, Dr. Nishikanta Chatterjee was in Germany. He wrote a thesis on the lyric poetry of our country comparing it with that of Europe. Bhanu Singha was given a place of honour as one of the old poets such as no modern writer could have aspired to. This was the thesis on which Nishikanta Chatterjee got his Ph. D.! Whoever Bhanu Singha might have been, had his writings fallen into the hands of latter-day me, I swear I would not have been deceived. The language might have passed muster; for that which the old poets wrote in was not their mother tongue, but an artificial language varying in the hands of different poets. But there was nothing artificial about their sentiments. Any attempt to test Bhanu Singha's poetry by its ring would have shown up the base metal. It had none of the ravishing melody of our ancient pipes, but only the tinkle of a modern, foreign barrel organ. (22) _Patriotism_ From an outside point of view many a foreign custom would appear to have gained entry into our family, but at its heart flames a national pride which has never flickered. The genuine regard which my father had for his country never forsook him through all the revolutionary vicissitudes of his life, and this in his descendants has taken shape as a strong patriotic feeling. Love of country was, however, by no means a characteristic of the times of which I am writing. Our educated men then kept at arms' length both the language and thought of their native land. Nevertheless my elder brothers had always cultivated Bengali literature. When on one occasion some new connection by marriage wrote my father an English letter it was promptly returned to the writer.