ome and cut his own throat. On the one hand new
history being made, on the other a tragic chapter hidden away in the
mysterious darkness of a human heart. How could there be such dismal
failure within and such brilliant success outside? This weighed heavily
on my mind the whole day.

Some days cousin Gunendra would not be allowed to remain in any doubt as
to the contents of my pocket. At the least encouragement out would come
my manuscript book, unabashed. I need hardly state that my cousin was
not a severe critic; in point of fact the opinions he expressed would
have done splendidly as advertisements. None the less, when in any of my
poetry my childishness became too obtrusive, he could not restrain his
hearty "Ha! Ha!"

One day it was a poem on "Mother India" and as at the end of one line
the only rhyme I could think of meant a cart, I had to drag in that cart
in spite of there not being the vestige of a road by which it could
reasonably arrive,--the insistent claims of rhyme would not hear of any
excuses mere reason had to offer. The storm of laughter with which
cousin Gunendra greeted it blew away the cart back over the same
impossible path it had come by, and it has not been heard of since.

My eldest brother was then busy with his masterpiece "The Dream
Journey," his cushion seat placed in the south verandah, a low desk
before him. Cousin Gunendra would come and sit there for a time every
morning. His immense capacity for enjoyment, like the breezes of spring,
helped poetry to sprout. My eldest brother would go on alternately
writing and reading out what he had written, his boisterous mirth at his
own conceits making the verandah tremble. My brother wrote a great deal
more than he finally used in his finished work, so fertile was his
poetic inspiration. Like the superabounding mango flowerets which carpet
the shade of the mango topes in spring time, the rejected pages of his
"Dream Journey" were to be found scattered all over the house. Had
anyone preserved them they would have been to-day a basketful of flowers
adorning our Bengali literature.

Eavesdropping at doors and peeping round corners, we used to get our
full share of this feast of poetry, so plentiful was it, with so much to
spare. My eldest brother was then at the height of his wonderful powers;
and from his pen surged, in untiring wave after wave, a tidal flood of
poetic fancy, rhyme and expression, filling and overflowing its banks
with an exubera