Not that the prospect is always of particular interest--a yellowish
sandbank, innocent of grass or tree, stretches away; an empty boat is tied
to its edge; the bluish water, of the same shade as the hazy sky, flows
past; yet I cannot tell how it moves me. I suspect that the old desires
and longings of my servant-ridden childhood--when in the solitary
imprisonment of my room I pored over the _Arabian Nights_, and shared
with Sinbad the Sailor his adventures in many a strange land--are not yet
dead within me, but are roused at the sight of any empty boat tied to a
sand-bank.
If I had not heard fairy tales and read the _Arabian Nights_ and
_Robinson Crusoe_ in childhood, I am sure views of distant banks, or
the farther side of wide fields, would not have stirred me so--the whole
world, in fact, would have had for me a different appeal.
What a maze of fancy and fact becomes tangled up within the mind of man!
The different strands--petty and great--of story and event and picture,
how they get knotted together!
SHELIDAH,
_22nd June 1892._
Early this morning, while still lying in bed, I heard the women at the
bathing-place sending forth joyous peals of _Ulu! Ulu!_[1] The sound
moved me curiously, though it is difficult to say why.
[Footnote 1: A peculiar shrill cheer given by women on auspicious or
festive occasions.]
Perhaps such joyful outbursts put one in mind of the great stream of
festive activity which goes on in this world, with most of which the
individual man has no connection.
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