uch more readily. When
material is in profusion, the mind gets lazy and leaves everything to
it, forgetting that for a successful feast of joy its internal equipment
counts for more than the external. This is the chief lesson which his
infant state has to teach to man. There his possessions are few and
trivial, yet he needs no more for his happiness. The world of play is
spoilt for the unfortunate youngster who is burdened with an unlimited
quantity of playthings.

To call our inner garden a garden is to say a deal too much. Its
properties consisted of a citron tree, a couple of plum trees of
different varieties, and a row of cocoanut trees. In the centre was a
paved circle the cracks of which various grasses and weeds had invaded
and planted in them their victorious standards. Only those flowering
plants which refused to die of neglect continued uncomplainingly to
perform their respective duties without casting any aspersions on the
gardener. In the northern corner was a rice-husking shed, where the
inmates of the inner apartments would occasionally foregather when
household necessity demanded. This last vestige of rural life has since
owned defeat and slunk away ashamed and unnoticed.

None the less I suspect that Adam's garden of Eden could hardly have
been better adorned than this one of ours; for he and his paradise were
alike naked; they needed not to be furnished with material things. It is
only since his tasting of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and till
he can fully digest it, that man's need for external furniture and
embellishment persistently grows. Our inner garden was my paradise; it
was enough for me. I well remember how in the early autumn dawn I would
run there as soon as I was awake. A scent of dewy grass and foliage
would rush to meet me, and the morning with its cool fresh sunlight
would peep out at me over the top of the Eastern garden wall from below
the trembling tassels of the cocoanut palms.

There is another piece of vacant land to the north of the house which to
this day we call the _golabari_ (barn house). The name shows that in
some remote past this must have been the place where the year's store of
grain used to be kept in a barn. Then, as with brother and sister in
infancy, the likeness between town and country was visible all over. Now
the family resemblance can hardly be traced. This _golabari_ would be my
holiday haunt if I got the chance. It would hardly be correct to say
that