FRIENDSHIPS AND PERSONALITY 219 



his cares and difficulties, and so lightening them not a little. 

 For his impassioned temperament in younger days doubt- 

 less fiery, and still excitable enough her strong serenity and 

 persistently cheerful courage have been an invaluable and 

 ever active support, like the fly-wheel steadily maintaining 

 and regulating the throbbing energies of the steam-engine. 

 Pilgrimages in India and visits to Europe and America have 

 been made always together, and their one great common 

 sorrow the loss of their only babe in early infancy has 

 made them more completely at one. Alike for physical 

 health, on the whole well maintained, yet once and again 

 nursed back from danger, and for steadiness of intellectual 

 output, for consolation in times of trial, difficulty and 

 depression, as well as cheerful acceptance and constant 

 lightening of long years of poverty and self-denial which 

 cannot but press more closely upon a wife than on a husband 

 Bose has indeed been rarely fortunate in such a helpmeet ; 

 and no friend or biographer could fail to recognise the 

 greatness of her share in his life's productivity and success. 



The advantages of celibacy to the intellectual life have 

 so long been urged and acted on in East and West alike 

 that it is as well that those whose experience and career 

 have had the yet higher advantages of wedlock at its best 

 should also bear their testimony. And that even such 

 devoted companionship may be fully compatible for the 

 wife as well as for the husband with cultural usefulness and 

 influence beyond the home is demonstrated by a life like 

 that of Lady Bose, whose leadership in administration of 

 the highly efficient Girls' High School opposite her Calcutta 

 home is the fit pendant to her husband's activities in his 

 Institute beside it. 



Before we pass to his other enduring friendships, we 

 must understand his outlook on life and immediate duties. 

 His early childhood was, as we have seen, deeply impressed 

 by the traditions of the heroic epoch of ancient India, 

 and he had the unshaken belief ' that the past shall yet be 

 reborn in a nobler future through the efforts of their lives/ 



