...
The emptiness left by easy joys, untasted, is ever growing in my life. And
the day may come when I shall feel that, could I but have the past back, I
would strive no more after the unattainable, but drain to the full these
little, unsought, everyday joys which life offers.
SHAZADPUR,
_27th June 1892._
Yesterday, in the afternoon, it clouded over so threateningly, I felt a
sense of dread. I do not remember ever to have seen before such
angry-looking clouds.
Swollen masses of the deepest indigo blue were piled, one on top of the
other, just above the horizon, looking like the puffed-out moustaches of
some raging demon.
Under the jagged lower edges of the clouds there shone forth a blood-red
glare, as through the eyes of a monstrous, sky-filling bison, with tossing
mane and with head lowered to strike the earth in fury.
The crops in the fields and the leaves of the trees trembled with fear of
the impending disaster; shudder after shudder ran across the waters; the
crows flew wildly about, distractedly cawing.
SHAZADPUR,
_29th June 1892._
I wrote yesterday that I had an engagement with Kalidas, the poet, for
this evening. As I lit a candle, drew my chair up to the table, and made
ready, not Kalidas, but the postmaster, walked in. A live postmaster
cannot but claim precedence over a dead poet, so I could not very well
tell him to make way for Kalidas, who was due by appointment,--he would
not have understood me! Therefore I offered him a chair and gave old
Kalidas the go-by.
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