hought and fancy abound, but the richness and
variety of language and expression is also marvellous. It is not a small
thing, this creative power which can bring into being so magnificent a
structure complete in all its artistic detail, and that is perhaps why
the idea of attempting an imitation never occurred to me.

At this time Viharilal Chakravarti's series of songs called _Sarada
Mangal_ were coming out in the _Arya Darsan_. My sister-in-law was
greatly taken with the sweetness of these lyrics. Most of them she knew
by heart. She used often to invite the poet to our house and had
embroidered for him a cushion-seat with her own hands. This gave me the
opportunity of making friends with him. He came to have a great
affection for me, and I took to dropping in at his house at all times of
the day, morning, noon or evening. His heart was as large as his body,
and a halo of fancy used to surround him like a poetic astral body which
seemed to be his truer image. He was always full of true artistic joy,
and whenever I have been to him I have breathed in my share of it. Often
have I come upon him in his little room on the third storey, in the heat
of noonday, sprawling on the cool polished cement floor, writing his
poems. Mere boy though I was, his welcome was always so genuine and
hearty that I never felt the least awkwardness in approaching him. Then,
wrapt in his inspiration and forgetful of all surroundings, he would
read out his poems or sing his songs to me. Not that he had much of the
gift of song in his voice; but then he was not altogether tuneless, and
one could get a fair idea of the intended melody.[36] When with eyes
closed he raised his rich deep voice, its expressiveness made up for
what it lacked in execution. I still seem to hear some of his songs as
he sang them. I would also sometimes set his words to music and sing
them to him.

He was a great admirer of Valmiki and Kalidas. I remember how once after
reciting a description of the Himalayas from Kalidas with the full
strength of his voice, he said: "The succession of long [=a] sounds here
is not an accident. The poet has deliberately repeated this sound all
the way from _Devatatma_ down to _Nagadhiraja_ as an assistance in
realising the glorious expanse of the Himalayas."

At the time the height of my ambition was to become a poet like Vihari
Babu. I might have even succeeded in working myself up to the belief
that I was actually writing like him, but f