ep
it under lock and key. Its inaccessibility made me want it all the more
and I threw out the challenge that read the book I must and would.

One afternoon she was playing cards, and her keys, tied to a corner of
her _sari_, hung over her shoulder. I had never paid any attention to
cards, in fact I could not stand card games. But my behaviour that day
would hardly have borne this out, so engrossed was I in their playing.
At last, in the excitement of one side being about to make a score, I
seized my opportunity and set about untying the knot which held the
keys. I was not skilful, and moreover excited and hasty and so got
caught. The owner of the _sari_ and of the keys took the fold off her
shoulder with a smile, and laid the keys on her lap as she went on with
the game.

Then I hit on a stratagem. My kinswoman was fond of _pan_,[31] and I
hastened to place some before her. This entailed her rising later on to
get rid of the chewed _pan_, and, as she did so, her keys fell off her
lap and were replaced over her shoulder. This time they got stolen, the
culprit got off, and the book got read! Its owner tried to scold me,
but the attempt was not a success, we both laughed so.

Dr. Rajendralal Mitra used to edit an illustrated monthly miscellany. My
third brother had a bound annual volume of it in his bookcase. This I
managed to secure and the delight of reading it through, over and over
again, still comes back to me. Many a holiday noontide has passed with
me stretched on my back on my bed, that square volume on my breast,
reading about the Narwhal whale, or the curiosities of justice as
administered by the Kazis of old, or the romantic story of
Krishna-kumari.

Why do we not have such magazines now-a-days? We have philosophical and
scientific articles on the one hand, and insipid stories and travels on
the other, but no such unpretentious miscellanies which the ordinary
person can read in comfort--such as Chambers's or Cassell's or the
Strand in England--which supply the general reader with a simple, but
satisfying fare and are of the greatest use to the greatest number.

I came across another little periodical in my young days called the
_Abodhabandhu_ (ignorant man's friend). I found a collection of its
monthly numbers in my eldest brother's library and devoured them day
after day, seated on the doorsill of his study, facing a bit of terrace
to the South. It was in the pages of this magazine that I made my first
a