Born in Calcutta, May 6, 1861, he came into a rare inheritance for his later work as religious leader and writer. Like all children of the higher social classes in India, he was environed from his birth with poetic atmosphere. His blessing, as a newborn babe, was spoken in verse; as he grew older many of his studies were in poetic form. The family name was Thakur, Anglicized into Tagore; his father and grandfathers had been identified with education and civil reforms. Raja Sir Sourindra Mohun Tagore was founder of the Bengal Music School; another, Abanindranath Tagore, was a noted painter and leader in art-movements. His father might have been a Maharaja (a great king) but he preferred to be Maharshi (a great sage), thus he was more closely linked with the people than with nobility. He insisted upon paying debts which his father, a prince, had left. He would have made himself a pauper but the creditors refused to accept such sacrifices, so he had a certain amount of property. He devoted himself to spiritual teachings and traveled through India on such missions, gaining the respect of all classes. [Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._ RABINDRANATH TAGORE] The son who won this Nobel prize was the youngest in a family of seven brothers and three sisters. He was lonely as a child, for his mother died when he was young and he was often left with men-servants for days. The return of his father marked the “gala-days”--_his_ presence pervaded the whole house. Nature was the boy’s comrade and he would often dig with a bamboo stick in the ground to find any possible “mysteries.” Perfumes affected his senses and left vivid memories, as he tells in his _Reminiscences_. The school life, after he was six years, was a brief period of unhappiness. He was, perhaps, stubborn to a degree and was ranked as the lowest in his class because he refused to answer orally, but he thought out problems so well, in written work, that he amazed his teachers and was given first place. The Oriental Seminary, the Normal School, the Bengal Academy--all seemed to him “prison-houses.” At home he studied, with a tutor, history, sciences, and English literature. At first, he laughed, somewhat scornfully, at English poetry because of the unusual sounds.