(lvi. ) or of pandering to the predilection of many to push themselves to the front while really they deserve to remain in the rear rank, inspite of their wealth and possessions. It is because, “Full many a gem of the purest ray serene. The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear," that we take up the subject, and we do so in the first issue of the new year because it is the first issue. Babu Vihari Lala Mittra, of the ancient Bagbazar Mitra family, is a gentleman, not perhaps so wellknown to the outside public as some others, who by virtue of push and ostentation, contrive to have their names and pedigrees blazoned in print, but who either in lineage or length of the purse, either in education or strong commonsense, can in any way, come up to him. This, however, is an idiosyncracy of life, of which the thoughtful alone will take note. The Bagbazar Mittra fauily is second to none among the aristocracy of Calcutta. When yet Calcutta was a forest hamlet, full of swamps, marshes, ditches and ponds, -a happy hunting ground of the Royal Bengal tiger-the most ferocious of the world's carnivori, of the deadliest snakes, from the huge ponderous Boa to the lithe venomous Krait, of the spotted antelope an the antlered deer, the founder of the Calcutta branch of the well known Bally Mittra family fixed his abode in the premier portion of the town, now known as Bagbazar. That was so far back as l42, prior to the time when Nawab Sirajud-dowla swooped down upon the factory of C.'tta
