'Life is real, life is earnest,'--that line applies to you!"

Pulin fidgeted about before answering. "It must have been Tennyson--or
was it Wordsworth? I never could keep poetry in my head."

Nalini thought that an F.A. might have remembered Longfellow's Psalm
of Life, but he refrained from airing superior knowledge.

"Do you know any mathematics?" he inquired.

"Mathematics!" replied Pulin joyously. "Why, they're my forte---I
am quite at home in arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. Please ask me
any question you like."

"Well, let us have Prop. 30, Book I. of Euclid."

Pulin rattled off Proposition 13 of that book, without the aid of a
diagram. Nalini now saw that the young man's mental equipment was
of the slenderest description. He said, "Well, you may call on me
another day, when I may be able to tell you of some vacancy".

Pulin, however, would take no denial. He became so insistent
that Nalini reluctantly gave him a letter of introduction to Babu
Kaliprasanna Som, Secretary of the Rámnagar High School, who, he
said, was looking about him for a fourth master. Pulin lost no time
in delivering it and was immediately appointed to the vacant post.

English education in Bengal is not regarded as a key which opens
the door of a glorious literature, but simply and solely as a
stepping-stone in the path of worldly success. The Department seems to