V. TASTES, IDEALS, CHOICES
		I see myself an honoured guest, Thy partner in the flowery walk Of letters, genial table-talk Or deep dispute, and graceful jest. --Tennyson We needs must love the highest, when we see it.. --Tennyson
	Writing as I do some years after the death of Chellam, I claim to be credited with a fair share of judgment in saying anything of the dear dead, especially by way of praise. Grief has grown old but time has not made it less true than at the first, it has so mellowed it with other befallings, other sorrows, that in place of the pain that prostrates there is a severe calm. The heart still aches, but tears no longer blind the eye to discernment -my grief is rainbowed with hope. I can afford to write with discrimination. With long use the tears are dry:   But what of that? My darkened ways Shall sing with music all the same: To breathe my loss is more than fame, To utter love more sweet than praise. Let love, praise and judgment watch over love.   --- Literary companionship is rare in Ceylon, particularly among the Tamils. Fresh from college where I had learnt to love the excellencies of literature, English and Classics, I was in danger of resting content with what I credited myself with knowing, when I had the good fortune to come across young Barr -by that name I knew him first -in the society of Oliver Goldsmith. That author's Citizen of the World was then attracting the young Royalist's attention. We read the essays together, he with the enthusiasm of first love, and I with the soberer joy of renewing an old friendship for the style and thought and sedate wit of Goldsmith. Literary appreciation is the bond of literary companionship. Chellam was a keen lover of the artistic in literature. It is a pleasure to read, discuss or be questioned by such a person. He was one that did not accept opinions of others as final, he was inclined to go behind even ex cathedra utterances of accepted critics. He formed his own conclusions and tested them in the light of other men's learning, Being naturally musical he loved to read aloud long selections from Shakespeare, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, Shelley, Pope, Longfellow, Rosetti, Morris, Ruskin, and Hooker among others. He would go into ecstasies as his ears would catch the rhyming cadence of this or that writer. This joy was infectious. I owe much to him for familiarising me with the wealth of thought and grace embedded in the archaic style of Spencer. I was a sore trial to his temper, which at times would burst out into wrath, by my speaking somewhat irreverently of Pope as a sententious jingler, and of Milton as an uncouth Latinist. Warmly would he espouse the cause of these writers and, in spite, declare war against some books and men, especially the late Laureate of my particular praise. Then we would proclaim an armistice and restore Pope to his pedestal, Milton to his eminence and Tennyson to his throne. The In Memoriam we read together at least once a week regularly from 1895, pausing and pondering over its light and shade, sorrow and song. In many a nook and corner so congenial to literary quiet in Mount Lavinia and Dehiwela -places to me full of affectionate association rendered doubly dear by the memory of the first of the Barrs, and of the last -long hours we would spend, poring over stanza upon stanza of that sublime elegy, the silence of the pauses in our study, thoughtful and even sad, being more full of speech than the mouthing of the words melodious. I remember one such silence, fateful and foreboding, after reading of that "shadow"   Who broke our fair companionship And spread his mantle, dark and cold And wrapt the formless in the fold And dulled the murmur on thy lip And bore thee where I could not see Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste And think that somewhere in the waste The shadow sits and waits for me. Little did we then know how soon the shadow was to come between us, and less do I feel able to guess how long the shadow may have to sit and wait for me. I cannot understand, except on the supposition of inherent talent, how remarkably fast he had grown to love the study, not merely the reading of the masters of English prose and verse, of Latin thought and fiction, or of the grandeur of Greek. He was able to quote and criticise and mark the beauties of form and substance. He was a voracious reader, indeed his reading was at the expense of proportionate physical recreation. It was this one-sidedness of culture that finally cost him his life, which began so full of promise and so rich in service. He was a lover of the beautiful in nature and in art. His love of landscapes, flowers and animals was not less passionate than his love of the exquisite in literature. The cult of the beautiful he ardently pursued, pure-hearted enthusiast that he was. The rhythmic swing of Hiawatha pleased his ear, and the martial tread of the Iliad delighted him. He would be a critic with Horace, a satirist with Juvenal, and philosopher with Lucretius. "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report" -this was one of his favourite texts. And it is but giving him his due to say that his catalogue of aspirations and attainments was comprehended therein. Humour he never despised. He appreciated a good joke and laughed most heartily. Twice he had read the Pickwick Papers, and was well up in the literature of Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey & Sons, and the other chief works of Dickens. He was the type of a jovial, healthy-minded student, full of joy in the common things of life, and yet filled with lofty ideals. The religion that he professed was a cheerful Puritanism. He believed in his favourite utterance that a constant reader of penitential literature was a moribund Christian. Devotionally he would read the Bible very regularly, and praying was a part of his daily programme. There was something not of this earth in his singing of religious songs, that to this day those songs have remained in the hearts of those that heard him most and loved him best, full of affectionate and spiritual remembrances. One more than any other I ought to mention here. In his singing of it, it was not the beauty of the plaintive simplicity of words, nor the exquisiteness of the music, nor the appeal of his sweet voice, that set the words to throb and thrill with life, but it was the flow of the soul in its longing to be away from scenes of the earth, earthy, otherwhere. I give a few lines in the Tamil without spoiling the force of the words by a translation   Tamil Versr I had often tried, and I believe succeeded, to persuade him to appreciate the remarkable moderation of the Church of England. He was not averse to the simple ritual of the morning and evening services, and at Dehiwela he loved to attend the services conducted by the Rev. A Weerasingam, sometimes in his brother's house, sometimes in the church. Mr. Weerasingam was a severe ritualist in those days, and he conducted the services in the Mudaliar's house in full canonicals, the congregation consisting of the Mudaliar, and his brothers and sisters and myself. The prayer book was read right through, including all the collects, but nothing that was done by way of form ever seemed in the mind of Chellam to make the service less spiritual than what he took it to be. By close association with Wesleyans, particularly those of Wesley College, and in the exalted Puritan atmosphere of his brother's household, he easily gravitated towards Wesleyanism, which seemed a safe half-way between the extreme non-conformity of the Salvationists, and the rigorous ritualism represented by stern, well-meaning Mr. Weerasingham. In Oxford he was commended to the care and companionship of the Wesleyan Clergy of Merton. He was a worker with a band of lay helpers who went about the neighourhood of Merton doing good. In his last illness, he was very kindly visited by many good and tender-hearted Wesleyan ministers, and at his grave his mortal remains were laid to rest to the touching utterances of the burial service as read by a Wesleyan minister. As he lived, so he died. Of religious books he was fond of reading may be mentioned next to the Bible, the writings of Dean Farrar, with whose Eternal Hope his tender soul was very much in accord, and how many are there who can read those grand sermons without feeling that there is something strongly appealing to the heart and consciences of men and women? He believed in religion as a passion, quite particularly so in the manner of the Hindu saint poet Thayumanaver, whose melodious verse both he and his eldest brother were very fond of reading and repeating. I remember that a few hours every Sunday we set apart at 67 Dam Street, Colombo, for reading Thayumanaver with a Hindu pundit who was a very devout and learned man. Chellam in his last days in London was much impressed by the ministrations of Major Musa Bhai, a dear friend of the family. His faith, there is no doubt as may be gathered from his letters and the letters of his friends to him, was greatly strengthened as the course of his life was fast coming to a close. He had latterly, a few days before his death, even submitted to faith healing, having been anointed by Mrs. Baxter. It is distressing to speculate as to how far the attempts at faith cure had raised hopes in him, so sadly to result in fearful disappointment. In summing up the many points of his religious life, it may justly be said that his life was one of sustained prayerfulness, humble trust, and practical goodness. It was a life all along calmful, without outburst of real or fanciful exaltations. There was such steadiness and such simplicity in his trustful relationship to his God, as undoubtedly gave him courage during his long and painful sufferings, constantly to remember that he was in the hands of One who doeth all things well.