8 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



nowadays so regularised and formalised in their procedure, 

 something to learn from such old-fashioned predecessors 

 of whom there have always been a few, but too few in every 

 land? 



The innate gentleness of this vigorous magistrate be- 

 comes increasingly manifested throughout our too scanty 

 records of a career which plainly in itself might have made 

 a volume. For despite unusually active duties, he found 

 time alike for advancing material interests and cultural ones ; 

 and these both separately and together. Thus year by year 

 he organised one of the Melas which were even then 

 beginning to fall into desuetude, but which he effectively 

 revived. He encouraged their old elements of religious 

 festivals, public holiday, and fair, with dramatic and athletic 

 performances ; and he was wont to organise along with them 

 an exhibition of local manufactures and agricultural pro- 

 ducts much, in fact, as if in European villages we could 

 revive the old ' Holy Fair ' with its sports and miracle 

 plays, arranging along with them an exhibition of home 

 industries and an agricultural and horticultural show. 



One of his son's vivid recollections is of the joys of a 

 Mela to which his father had brought an excellent troupe 

 of Jatra players, whose performance was as great and amazing 

 a j oy to the Bose children as to the people. This appreciation 

 is evidenced not only by an enduring memory of the vivid 

 scenes, the breathless and crowded audience, but by a quaint 

 and pleasing recollection of the English chief magistrate 

 who was in the audience, and who not only emptied his 

 pocket of the substantial handful of rupees he had brought 

 for the players after their performance, but stirred and 

 shaken altogether out of usual official decorum and reserve 

 bade them wait while he ran hastily back to his house for 

 more ; and with many added compliments, sent the delighted 

 players on their homeward way. 



In 1869 (when Jagadis was ten years old) his father 

 became Assistant-Commissioner of Burdwan, where he 

 remained four or five years, till 1874. Here the duties were 



