for the
suspicion that his humour had not deserted him even after death. Once my
elders were engaged in an attempt to start a postal service with the
other world by means of a planchette. At one of the sittings the pencil
scrawled out the name of Kailash. He was asked as to the sort of life
one led where he was. Not a bit of it, was the reply. "Why should you
get so cheap what I had to die to learn?"

This Kailash used to rattle off for my special delectation a doggerel
ballad of his own composition. The hero was myself and there was a
glowing anticipation of the arrival of a heroine. And as I listened my
interest would wax intense at the picture of this world-charming bride
illuminating the lap of the future in which she sat enthroned. The list
of the jewellery with which she was bedecked from head to foot, and the
unheard of splendour of the preparations for the bridal, might have
turned older and wiser heads; but what moved the boy, and set wonderful
joy pictures flitting before his vision, was the rapid jingle of the
frequent rhymes and the swing of the rhythm.

These two literary delights still linger in my memory--and there is the
other, the infants' classic: "The rain falls pit-a-pat, the tide comes
up the river."

The next thing I remember is the beginning of my school-life. One day I
saw my elder brother, and my sister's son Satya, also a little older
than myself, starting off to school, leaving me behind, accounted unfit.
I had never before ridden in a carriage nor even been out of the house.
So when Satya came back, full of unduly glowing accounts of his
adventures on the way, I felt I simply could not stay at home. Our tutor
tried to dispel my illusion with sound advice and a resounding slap:
"You're crying to go to school now, you'll have to cry a lot more to be
let off later on." I have no recollection of the name, features or
disposition of this tutor of ours, but the impression of his weighty
advice and weightier hand has not yet faded. Never in my life have I
heard a truer prophecy.

My crying drove me prematurely into the Oriental Seminary. What I learnt
there I have no idea, but one of its methods of punishment I still bear
in mind. The boy who was unable to repeat his lessons was made to stand
on a bench with arms extended, and on his upturned palms were piled a
number of slates. It is for psychologists to debate how far this method
is likely to conduce to a better grasp of things. I thus began m