Note 66 — VIII.

The late Rajah Rajkissen Bahadoor, Baboos Santiram Sing, Ramdoolal Dey, Shibnarain Ghose, Prankissen Holdar, the Mullick family, the Ghosal family of Bhookoylash and others, spent large sums of money from year to year in giving clothes, food and money to a very large number of poor men, and liberating prisoners from jail on payment of their debts. Any relief to suffering humanity is certainly an act of great merit for which the donors deserve well of the community. In our days there are several Baboos who do the same on a limited scale, but the name of Baboo Tarucknauth Puramanick of Kassiriparrah deserves a special notice. Naturally unassuming and unambitious, his character is as irreproachable as his large-heartedness is conspicuous. On every anniversary of the Doorga Poojah, and on almost every religious celebration, he gives alms to hundreds and thousands of poor people without distinction of caste or creed. On the occasion of the Doorga Poojah festival he would not break his fast until midnight, when he is assured that all the poor people who came to his door have been duly provided with food and coppers. For three nights this distribution of alms continues. The public road before his house is closed by order of the police for the accommodation of beggars. Five or six times in a month he feeds all the poor people that come to his house, hence the fame of his generosity is spread far and wide, and he is surnamed Taruck Baboo, "the datta" or charitable—a distinction which the more opulent of his countrymen (and there are not a few) should seek to covet.