Mr. Powell also taught them the indoor game of Battledoor and Shuttlecock which they played in the long hall of the school-building in wet weather. Sometimes they had the country games— Kittippullu, a kind of indigenous cricket, and Uppukkodu. This latter was played in a space marked out like salt pans, with lines drawn across in both directions at right angles. These lines were guarded by one set of boys, while another strove to pass them into the next compartment without being caught.

Nor did they lack more exciting, if also more questionable, pursuits. Some bolder adventurers, of whom Sashiah was one, disdained

"The limits of their little reign,

And unknown regions dared descry."

Pelting at wood-apples was a favourite amusement, and Sashiah and his merry band often fell into the hands of the gardener and had to purchase their freedom by ransoms of a few annas for each transgression. They added a little variety by occasional mango-stealing and poaching on the gardener's beds of peas!

If Mr. Powell loved his boys, they loved him no less. A word of praise from him, a nod of approval, or a smile of encouragement was their highest ambition, and an hour with him in

'social converse or instructive ease' was something to look forward to with eager delight or to be remembered with joyful gratitude, as can be seen from the following note :

SUNDAY.

MY DEAR SASHIAH,

This appears to be a beautifully clear evening. Shall we go over to Mr. Powell to gaze at the worlds above. I don't think we can pass the evening better, and surely it would be no desecration of the Sabbath as far as Mr. Powell is concerned.

I am,
Yours as ever,

V. RAMIAH.*

Sashiah (sometimes with his young cousin) would often go to Mr. Powell's and share in the merriments and juvenile amusements of the family. He refers to one of these occasions in a letter to Mr. E. B. Powell:

"This last is no other than the son of Krishnasawami, my cousin whom you used to remember very well as the little fellow who, to the question, "Why did God create light first?" answered very naively, "to enable Him to Bee." Whenever I went to Madras I used to see your son and tell him of the days when he was born and had his first

* The writer of this note, it may be here stated, was at this time (1846) a senior student of the High School, afterwards, the Honourable V. Ramiengar, C.S.I., Sashiah's successor as Dewan of Travan

core.

birth-day celebrated at Huddleston's, Adyar, at which I furnished the fireworks, and my little cousin, then six years. old, was present to see the fireworks. These are very pleasant recollections to me at this distance of time."

It does one's heart good to contemplate this touching bond of union between the master and the pupil, a union of soul to soul that no time or space could break. Writing in 1896, after an interval of 50 years and more, Sashiah says. to Mr. Powell :-

66

I never ate my daily bread without remembering you The Vedic text says-Mâtri-Devo Bhava, Pitri-Devo Bhava, Acharya-Devo Bhava, Atithi-Devo Bhava. That is to say, the first (after God) to reverence is the mother, the next the father, the next is the Guru (one's master), the next is the unexpected guest at your door. Allow me, therefore, the first thing before I proceed, to make my reverence or prostrations to you as my Guru and invoke your blessings."

Such reverent affection for the Acharya was the ideal and practice of the student in Ancient India and is still found here and there, though perhaps a little out of date now, when the professor and the student rarely see each other except in the lecture-room, the student selfsufficient and with an eye to the main chance of success in the University Examinations, and the professor seldom looking beyond his lectures to the lectured many; and Mr. Powell was a typical

Âchârya of the old days of India, whose relation to the pupil was a life-long tie.

That such was Mr. Powell's conception of the duties of a teacher can be seen from the following extract from a letter he wrote to Sashiah in 1848 while on a sea-voyage to recruit his health :

"I have no doubt of your deriving pleasure from the following few lines when I reflect upon the long and intimate connexion that has existed between you and me, and the satisfaction which, I believe, it has given us all. I trust also that you, as well as all my other graduates, will not allow the tie to be broken by the termination of the scholastic course. My teaching will have been but to little effect, if my scholars leave me with the impression that their education is completed; in every case it is but begun; and if this impression do not exist, as I hope and trust is the case, to no one can you so appropriately look for hints and advice regarding your future and more practical course of study than to him who was your teacher in the elements. According to the system of instruction that prevails in this stage of the world, teacher and pupil enter into a cold and formal relation to one another, which too is at an end after the lapse of a few years."

It was Sashiah's good fortune to be moulded under such ennobling influences, and to this day Mr. Powell's is a name that awakens in his bosom the tenderest chords of affection. The Indian mind is essentially grateful, and kindness and courtesy from the ruling race seldom go unremembered to the dying day. As Sashiah writes

to Mr. G. N. Taylor under whom he had served in the Inam Commission :

"You were almost the first civilian who treated us as gentlemen and more as brethren in the service than as subordinates..... What feelings of pleasure rush upon the mind when memory brings back the conversaziones, the very first of their kind, which yourself or rather Mrs. Taylor and yourself used to improvise every week for our recreation as well as improvement both at Palamanair and other places. Yourself and Mrs. Taylor were so far and away ahead of your brother-civilians in these as well as, indeed, in all other respects, that we all felt a perfect void for many years after you left. Even now there are very few indeed who think and act in that way. The icy gulf which separates the native from European society is still there, and 'At homes' which are given at long intervals only reveal like lightning the darkness beyond."

As a humble expression of his gratitude to his master, Sashiah contributed in 1872 Rs. 1,000, towards the statue of Mr. Powell, which now adorns the Presidency College.

Sashiah continued in the High School till May, 1848. It was a hard struggle, financially, in the early years of this period. The school-fees, which came to Rs. 4 a month, taxed all the resources of Gopala Aiyar, and in some months the boy had to be a defaulter. But his general intelligence and smartness had early attracted the attention of Mr. Powell, who took a particular interest in him, and coming to know of his