252 SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 



they had withered, venders of images, preaching fakirs , 

 and round them all the great surging, tightly massed 

 crowd with a constant hum of voices night and day 

 and all this under the control of a handful of young men 

 mostly in their early twenties. The responsibility for 

 the health and orderliness of these multitudes was in 

 their hands, and how ably and tactfully these boys face 

 similar problems only those who have been in India 

 can know. At Benares the great educational centre 

 was the new college founded by Mrs. Besant for the 

 sons of the wealthier and stricter Hindus. Ramsay had 

 a special interest in visiting it, as an old assistant of his, 

 Dr. Arthur Richardson, who had a few years previously 

 embraced theosophy and was in sympathy with Mrs. 

 Besant's views, was Principal and Professor of Chemistry 

 in the college. Ramsay gave a short lecture the day he 

 spent there and, of course, saw the laboratories. 



Cawnpore and Lucknowwere next visited, but as neither 

 were thought of as sites for the new Institute, and there 

 was not a great deal in either with a bearing on the work 

 in hand, the visits were very hurried. There was time, 

 however, to see the memorial over the well, and the 

 ghaut of tragic interest at Cawnpore and at Lucknow, 

 that monument to British courage and endurance, the 

 ruined Residency, with its flagpost on which the flag is 

 always flying, and the graveyard where so many of the 

 best and bravest of its defenders lie. Wherever Ramsay 

 had been he had been told " the man whom you must 

 see is Hankin of Agra," and it was with much interest 



