FRIENDSHIPS AND PERSONALITY 221 



selves. The acquaintance ripened quickly during her short 

 stay in Calcutta in 1899, and Mrs. Bull urged on the Boses 

 to visit her some day in America. After Bose's attendance 

 at the International Science Congress at Paris in 1900 and 

 subsequent cares, his health broke down, and he was in 

 imminent danger, when Mrs. Bull, hearing of this, came 

 over from the Continent, found him an expert surgeon, 

 and helped to nurse him back to health. From this time 

 a deep friendship grew up, and Bose found in her anew 

 the great qualities of his own mother. When the Boses 

 went to America in 1907 her home was theirs, and head- 

 quarters for his visits to different Universities. They 

 also came to know Mrs. Bull's brother, Mr. J. G. Thorp, 

 a very influential and honoured citizen of Boston, and his 

 wife, the poet Longfellow's daughter ; and on a second 

 visit in 1914, after Mrs. Ole Bull's death, Mr. Thorp's house 

 was their home and centre for making new contacts with 

 leading minds of Boston and Harvard. 



Latest among these friendships, but in some ways of 

 the very highest importance, came that with Margaret 

 Noble better known as Sister Nivedita after her dedication 

 to the Order of Ramakrishna, which the great person- 

 ality and teaching of Swami Vivekananda had launched 

 upon its career of varied usefulness, educational and social. 

 Nivedita's interests were too large and varied and eager 

 to be confined within any single round of duties or system 

 of doctrine ; and she keenly realised the importance of 

 Bose's work at once for science in general and for the fuller 

 arousal of scientific activities in India in particular. After 

 his serious illness, and while convalescing, Bose found a 

 home with Nivedita's mother at Wimbledon ; and later 

 Mrs. Bose during an illness found the same hospitality, 

 so that the two families were intimately and permanently 

 drawn together even for the young and rising generation. 



Nivedita's combination of intellectual and personal 

 idealism was fully aroused by Bose's discoveries and his 

 difficulties in those days in convincing others of them. 



