accountable curiosity kept me wandering about the empty rooms.

Into the niches in the wall of a large chamber my brother had put his
books. One of these was a gorgeous edition of Tennyson's works, with big
print and numerous pictures. The book, for me, was as silent as the
palace, and, much in the same way I wandered among its picture plates.
Not that I could not make anything of the text, but it spoke to me more
like inarticulate cooings than words. In my brother's library I also
found a book of collected Sanskrit poems edited by Dr. Haberlin and
printed at the old Serampore press. This was also beyond my
understanding but the sonorous Sanskrit words, and the march of the
metre, kept me tramping among the _Amaru Shataka_ poems to the mellow
roll of their drum call.

In the upper room of the palace tower was my lonely hermit cell, my only
companions being a nest of wasps. In the unrelieved darkness of the
night I slept there alone. Sometimes a wasp or two would drop off the
nest on to my bed, and if perchance I happened to roll on one, the
meeting was unpleasing to the wasp and keenly discomforting to me.

On moonlight nights pacing round and round the extensive terrace
overlooking the river was one of my caprices. It was while so doing that
I first composed my own tunes for my songs. The song addressed to the
Rose-maiden was one of these, and it still finds a place in my published
works.

Finding how imperfect was my knowledge of English I set to work reading
through some English books with the help of a dictionary. From my
earliest years it was my habit not to let any want of complete
comprehension interfere with my reading on, quite satisfied with the
structure which my imagination reared on the bits which I understood
here and there. I am reaping even to-day both the good and bad effects
of this habit.

(25) _England_

After six months thus spent in Ahmedabad we started for England. In an
unlucky moment I began to write letters about my journey to my relatives
and to the _Bharati_. Now it is beyond my power to call them back. These
were nothing but the outcome of youthful bravado. At that age the mind
refuses to admit that its greatest pride is in its power to understand,
to accept, to respect; and that modesty is the best means of enlarging
its domain. Admiration and praise are looked upon as a sign of weakness
or surrender, and the desire to cry down and hurt and demolish with
argument gives rise t