water which served
to mirror the majestic forest-lord! Many of those who used to bathe
there have also followed into oblivion the shade of the banyan tree. And
that boy, grown older, is counting the alternations of light and
darkness which penetrate the complexities with which the roots he has
thrown off on all sides have encircled him.

Going out of the house was forbidden to us, in fact we had not even the
freedom of all its parts. We perforce took our peeps at nature from
behind the barriers. Beyond my reach there was this limitless thing
called the Outside, of which flashes and sounds and scents used
momentarily to come and touch me through its interstices. It seemed to
want to play with me through the bars with so many gestures. But it was
free and I was bound--there was no way of meeting. So the attraction was
all the stronger. The chalk line has been wiped away to-day, but the
confining ring is still there. The distant is just as distant, the
outside is still beyond me; and I am reminded of the poem I wrote when I
was older:

The tame bird was in a cage, the free bird was in the
forest,
They met when the time came, it was a decree of fate.
The free bird cries, "O my love, let us fly to wood."
The cage bird whispers, "Come hither, let us both
live in the cage."
Says the free bird, "Among bars, where is there room
to spread one's wings?"
"Alas," cries the cage bird, "I should not know
where to sit perched in the sky."

The parapets of our terraced roofs were higher than my head. When I had
grown taller; when the tyranny of the servants had relaxed; when, with
the coming of a newly married bride into the house, I had achieved some
recognition as a companion of her leisure, then did I sometimes come up
to the terrace in the middle of the day. By that time everybody in the
house would have finished their meal; there would be an interval in the
business of the household; over the inner apartments would rest the
quiet of the midday siesta; the wet bathing clothes would be hanging
over the parapets to dry; the crows would be picking at the leavings
thrown on the refuse heap at the corner of the yard; in the solitude of
that interval the caged bird would, through the gaps in the parapet,
commune bill to bill with the free bird!

[Illustration: The Inner Garden was My Paradise]

I would stand and gaze.... My glance first falls on the row of cocoanut
trees on the