It was roses, roses all the way—almost all the way during the forty-four hours in the train from Calcutta to Surat; and along the last part of our journey every platform was crowded with eager, smiling faces straining to catch sight of the future President of the Congress, and the long-trusted leaders who accompanied him. Dr. Rash Behari Ghose had been designated President by the Reception Committee at Surat, in spite of stormy opposition in favour of Mr. Tilak at a conference in Nagpur some two months earlier, and the subsequent proposal of Lajpat Rai by Mr. Tilak himself. He stood smiling at the carriage door, and answered with short speeches of thanks and encouragement. Or he walked the platform, and sat at station tea-tables while old men and youths hung long garlands of marigolds and jasmine round his neck, presented him with bright bouquets of flowers sparkling with “fairy rain,” or sprinkled his coat and hands with Swadeshi scents from long silver bottles. Others were with him—Mr. Surendra Nath Banerjea, the orator, Mr. Aswini Kumar Dutt, the leader of Barisal, members of the Chaudhuri family conspicuous in Calcutta, and many other well-known men who for years past had tried to carry on the work of constitutional reform in the face of Anglo-Indian ridicule, contempt, and hatred. A few younger men were there also, men of another party, who had abandoned appeals and petitions either to Anglo-Indian or British justice. But the chief attention was centred on Dr. Ghose—Rash Behari, as people called him—a large, spectacled man of sixty-two, with strongly marked face and the general look and bearing of a European judge. From his student days at the Presidency College in Calcutta he had devoted himself to the law. He obtained the highest honours the University gives, he lectured in law, he produced the standard work on the “Law of Mortgage in India.” I suppose he was exactly what people mean by a jurist. He prided himself also on a minute acquaintance with the whole range of the English classics, and it is almost impossible to read a page of his speeches without coming upon memories of some great passage in our literature. For he belonged to the time when education and capacity were estimated by a knowledge of English, and he had besides a genuine delight in the form and substance of words. But civil law was his life’s business, and in the knowledge of it he was called unrivalled.