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[Illustration: RABINDRANATH TAGORE FROM THE PORTRAIT IN COLOURS BY SASI
KUMAR HESH]
MY REMINISCENCES
BY
SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE
WITH FRONTISPIECE FROM THE PORTRAIT IN COLORS BY SASI KUMAR HESH
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1917
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1916 AND 1917
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1917.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
These Reminiscences were written and published by the Author in his
fiftieth year, shortly before he started on a trip to Europe and America
for his failing health in 1912. It was in the course of this trip that
he wrote for the first time in the English language for publication.
In these memory pictures, so lightly, even casually presented by the
author there is, nevertheless, revealed a connected history of his inner
life together with that of the varying literary forms in which his
growing self found successive expression, up to the point at which both
his soul and poetry attained maturity.
This lightness of manner and importance of matter form a combination the
translation of which into a different language is naturally a matter of
considerable difficulty. It was, in any case, a task which the present
Translator, not being an original writer in the English language, would
hardly have ventured to undertake, had there not been other
considerations. The translator's familiarity, however, with the
persons, scenes, and events herein depicted made it a temptation
difficult for him to resist, as well as a responsibility which he did
not care to leave to others not possessing these advantages, and
therefore more liable to miss a point, or give a wrong impression.
The Translator, moreover, had the author's permission and advice to make
a free translation, a portion of which was completed and approved by the
latter before he left India on his recent tour to Japan and America.
In regard to the nature of the freedom taken for the purposes of the
translation, it may be mentioned that those suggestions which might not
have been as clear to the foreign as to the Bengali reader have been
brought out in a slightly more elaborate manner than in the original
text; while again, in rare cases, others which depend on allusions
entirely unfamiliar to the non-Indian reader, have been omitted rather
than spoil by an over-elaboration the simplicity and naturalness which
is the great feature of the original.
There are no footnotes in the original. All the footnotes here given
have been added by the Translator in the hope that they may be of
further assistance to the foreign reader.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Translator's Preface v
PART I
1. 1
2. Teaching Begins 3
3. Within and Without 8
PART II
4. Servocracy 25
5. The Normal School 30
6. Versification 35
7. Various Learning 38
8. My First Outing 44
9. Practising Poetry 48
PART III
10. Srikantha Babu 53
11. Our Bengali Course Ends 57
12. The Professor 60
13. My Father 67
14. A Journey with my Father 76
15. At the Himalayas 89
PART IV
16. My Return 101
17. Home Studies 111
18. My Home Environment 116
19. Literary Companions 125
20. Publishing 133
21. Bhanu Singha 135
22. Patriotism 138
23. The Bharati 147
PART V
24. Ahmedabad 155
25. England 157
26. Loken Palit 175
27. The Broken Heart 177
PART VI
28. European Music 189
29. Valmiki Pratibha 192
30. Evening Songs 199
31. An Essay on Music 203
32. The River-side 207
33. More About the Evening Songs 210
34. Morning Songs 214
PART VII
35. Rajendrahal Mitra 231
36. Karwar 235
37. Nature's Revenge 238
38. Pictures and Songs 241
39. An Intervening Period 244
40. Bankim Chandra 247
PART VIII
41. The Steamer Hulk 255
42. Bereavements 257
43. The Rains and Autumn 264
44. Sharps and Flats 267
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Rabindranath Tagore from the Portrait by S. K.
Hesh _Frontispiece_
_Facing Page_
Tagore in 1877 6
The Inner Garden Was My Paradise 14
The Ganges 54
Satya 64
Singing to My Father 82
The Himalayas 94
The Servant-Maids in the Verandah 106
My Eldest Brother 120
Moonlight 180
The Ganges Again 208
Karwar Beach 236
My Brother Jyotirindra 256
PART I
MY REMINISCENCES
(1)
I know not who paints the pictures on memory's canvas; but whoever he
may be, what he is painting are pictures; by which I mean that he is not
there with his brush simply to make a faithful copy of all that is
happening. He takes in and leaves out according to his taste. He makes
many a big thing small and small thing big. He has no compunction in
putting into the background that which was to the fore, or bringing to
the front that which was behind. In short he is painting pictures, and
not writing history.
Thus, over Life's outward aspect passes the series of events, and within
is being painted a set of pictures. The two correspond but are not one.
We do not get the leisure to view thoroughly this studio within us.
Portions of it now and then catch our eye, but the greater part remains
out of sight in the darkness. Why the ever-busy painter is painting;
when he will have done; for what gallery his pictures are destined--who
can tell?
Some years ago, on being questioned as to the events of my past life, I
had occasion to pry into this picture-chamber. I had thought to be
content with selecting some few materials for my Life's story. I then
discovered, as I opened the door, that Life's memories are not Life's
history, but the original work of an unseen Artist. The variegated
colours scattered about are not reflections of outside lights, but
belong to the painter himself, and come passion-tinged from his heart;
thereby unfitting the record on the canvas for use as evidence in a
court of law.
But though the attempt to gather precise history from memory's
storehouse may be fruitless, there is a fascination in looking over the
pictures, a fascination which cast its spell on me.
The road over which we journey, the wayside shelter in which we pause,
are not pictures while yet we travel--they are too necessary, too
obvious. When, however, before turning into the evening resthouse, we
look back upon the cities, fields, rivers and hills which we have been
through in Life's morning, then, in the light of the passing day, are
they pictures indeed. Thus, when my opportunity came, did I look back,
and was engrossed.
Was this interest aroused within me solely by a natural affection for
my own past? Some personal feeling, of course, there must have been, but
the pictures had also an independent artistic value of their own. There
is no event in my reminiscences worthy of being preserved for all time.
But the quality of the subject is not the only justification for a
record. What one has truly felt, if only it can be made sensible to
others, is always of importance to one's fellow men. If pictures which
have taken shape in memory can be brought out in words, they are worth a
place in literature.
It is as literary material that I offer my memory pictures. To take them
as an attempt at autobiography would be a mistake. In such a view these
reminiscences would appear useless as well as incomplete.
(2) _Teaching Begins_
We three boys were being brought up together. Both my companions were
two years older than I. When they were placed under their tutor, my
teaching also began, but of what I learnt nothing remains in my memory.
What constantly recurs to me is "The rain patters, the leaf quivers."[1]
I am just come to anchor after crossing the stormy region of the
_kara_, _khala_[2] series; and I am reading "The rain patters, the leaf
quivers," for me the first poem of the Arch Poet. Whenever the joy of
that day comes back to me, even now, I realise why rhyme is so needful
in poetry. Because of it the words come to an end, and yet end not; the
utterance is over, but not its ring; and the ear and the mind can go on
and on with their game of tossing the rhyme to each other. Thus did the
rain patter and the leaves quiver again and again, the live-long day in
my consciousness.
Another episode of this period of my early boyhood is held fast in my
mind.
We had an old cashier, Kailash by name, who was like one of the family.
He was a great wit, and would be constantly cracking jokes with
everybody, old and young; recently married sons-in-law, new comers into
the family circle, being his special butts. There was room for the
suspicion that his humour had not deserted him even after death. Once my
elders were engaged in an attempt to start a postal service with the
other world by means of a planchette. At one of the sittings the pencil
scrawled out the name of Kailash. He was asked as to the sort of life
one led where he was. Not a bit of it, was the reply. "Why should you
get so cheap what I had to die to learn?"
This Kailash used to rattle off for my special delectation a doggerel
ballad of his own composition. The hero was myself and there was a
glowing anticipation of the arrival of a heroine. And as I listened my
interest would wax intense at the picture of this world-charming bride
illuminating the lap of the future in which she sat enthroned. The list
of the jewellery with which she was bedecked from head to foot, and the
unheard of splendour of the preparations for the bridal, might have
turned older and wiser heads; but what moved the boy, and set wonderful
joy pictures flitting before his vision, was the rapid jingle of the
frequent rhymes and the swing of the rhythm.
These two literary delights still linger in my memory--and there is the
other, the infants' classic: "The rain falls pit-a-pat, the tide comes
up the river."
The next thing I remember is the beginning of my school-life. One day I
saw my elder brother, and my sister's son Satya, also a little older
than myself, starting off to school, leaving me behind, accounted unfit.
I had never before ridden in a carriage nor even been out of the house.
So when Satya came back, full of unduly glowing accounts of his
adventures on the way, I felt I simply could not stay at home. Our tutor
tried to dispel my illusion with sound advice and a resounding slap:
"You're crying to go to school now, you'll have to cry a lot more to be
let off later on." I have no recollection of the name, features or
disposition of this tutor of ours, but the impression of his weighty
advice and weightier hand has not yet faded. Never in my life have I
heard a truer prophecy.
My crying drove me prematurely into the Oriental Seminary. What I learnt
there I have no idea, but one of its methods of punishment I still bear
in mind. The boy who was unable to repeat his lessons was made to stand
on a bench with arms extended, and on his upturned palms were piled a
number of slates. It is for psychologists to debate how far this method
is likely to conduce to a better grasp of things. I thus began my
schooling at an extremely tender age.
My initiation into literature had its origin, at the same time, in the
books which were in vogue in the servants' quarters. Chief among these
were a Bengali translation of Chanakya's aphorisms, and the Ramayana of
Krittivasa.
A picture of one day's reading of the Ramayana comes clearly back to me.
[Illustration: Rabindranath Tagore in 1877]
The day was a cloudy one. I was playing about in the long verandah[3]
overlooking the road. All of a sudden Satya, for some reason I do not
remember, wanted to frighten me by shouting, "Policeman! Policeman!" My
ideas of the duties of policemen were of an extremely vague description.
One thing I was certain about, that a person charged with crime once
placed in a policeman's hands would, as sure as the wretch caught in a
crocodile's serrated grip, go under and be seen no more. Not knowing how
an innocent boy could escape this relentless penal code, I bolted
towards the inner apartments, with shudders running down my back for
blind fear of pursuing policemen. I broke to my mother the news of my
impending doom, but it did not seem to disturb her much. However, not
deeming it safe to venture out again, I sat down on the sill of my
mother's door to read the dog-eared Ramayana, with a marbled paper
cover, which belonged to her old aunt. Alongside stretched the verandah
running round the four sides of the open inner quadrangle, on which had
fallen the faint afternoon glow of the clouded sky, and finding me
weeping over one of its sorrowful situations my great-aunt came and took
away the book from me.
(3) _Within and Without_
Luxury was a thing almost unknown in the days of my infancy. The
standard of living was then, as a whole, much more simple than it is
now. Apart from that, the children of our household were entirely free
from the fuss of being too much looked after. The fact is that, while
the process of looking after may be an occasional treat for the
guardians, to the children it is always an unmitigated nuisance.
We used to be under the rule of the servants. To save themselves trouble
they had almost suppressed our right of free movement. But the freedom
of not being petted made up even for the harshness of this bondage, for
our minds were left clear of the toils of constant coddling, pampering
and dressing-up.
Our food had nothing to do with delicacies. A list of our articles of
clothing would only invite the modern boy's scorn. On no pretext did we
wear socks or shoes till we had passed our tenth year. In the cold
weather a second cotton tunic over the first one sufficed. It never
entered our heads to consider ourselves ill-off for that reason. It was
only when old Niyamat, the tailor, would forget to put a pocket into one
of our tunics that we complained, for no boy has yet been born so poor
as not to have the wherewithal to stuff his pockets; nor, by a merciful
dispensation of providence, is there much difference between the wealth
of boys of rich and of poor parentage. We used to have a pair of
slippers each, but not always where we had our feet. Our habit of
kicking the slippers on ahead, and catching them up again, made them
work none the less hard, through effectually defeating at every step the
reason of their being.
Our elders were in every way at a great distance from us, in their dress
and food, living and doing, conversation and amusement. We caught
glimpses of these, but they were beyond our reach. Elders have become
cheap to modern children; they are too readily accessible, and so are
all objects of desire. Nothing ever came so easily to us. Many a trivial
thing was for us a rarity, and we lived mostly in the hope of attaining,
when we were old enough, the things which the distant future held in
trust for us. The result was that what little we did get we enjoyed to
the utmost; from skin to core nothing was thrown away. The modern child
of a well-to-do family nibbles at only half the things he gets; the
greater part of his world is wasted on him.
Our days were spent in the servants' quarters in the south-east corner
of the outer apartments. One of our servants was Shyam, a dark chubby
boy with curly locks, hailing from the District of Khulna. He would put
me into a selected spot and, tracing a chalk line all round, warn me
with solemn face and uplifted finger of the perils of transgressing this
ring. Whether the threatened danger was material or spiritual I never
fully understood, but a great fear used to possess me. I had read in the
Ramayana of the tribulations of Sita for having left the ring drawn by
Lakshman, so it was not possible for me to be sceptical of its potency.
Just below the window of this room was a tank with a flight of masonry
steps leading down into the water; on its west bank, along the garden
wall, an immense banyan tree; to the south a fringe of cocoanut palms.
Ringed round as I was near this window I would spend the whole day
peering through the drawn Venetian shutters, gazing and gazing on this
scene as on a picture book. From early morning our neighbours would drop
in one by one to have their bath. I knew the time for each one to
arrive. I was familiar with the peculiarities of each one's toilet. One
would stop up his ears with his fingers as he took his regulation number
of dips, after which he would depart. Another would not venture on a
complete immersion but be content with only squeezing his wet towel
repeatedly over his head. A third would carefully drive the surface
impurities away from him with a rapid play of his arms, and then on a
sudden impulse take his plunge. There was one who jumped in from the top
steps without any preliminaries at all. Another would walk slowly in,
step by step, muttering his morning prayers the while. One was always in
a hurry, hastening home as soon as he was through with his dip. Another
was in no sort of hurry at all, taking his bath leisurely, followed with
a good rub-down, and a change from wet bathing clothes into clean ones,
including a careful adjustment of the folds of his waist cloth, ending
with a turn or two in the outer[4] garden, and the gathering of flowers,
with which he would finally saunter slowly homewards, radiating the cool
comfort of his refreshed body, as he went. This would go on till it was
past noon. Then the bathing places would be deserted and become silent.
Only the ducks remained, paddling about after water snails, or busy
preening their feathers, the live-long day.
When solitude thus reigned over the water, my whole attention would be
drawn to the shadows under the banyan tree. Some of its aerial roots,
creeping down along its trunk, had formed a dark complication of coils
at its base. It seemed as if into this mysterious region the laws of the
universe had not found entrance; as if some old-world dream-land had
escaped the divine vigilance and lingered on into the light of modern
day. Whom I used to see there, and what those beings did, it is not
possible to express in intelligible language. It was about this banyan
tree that I wrote later:
With tangled roots hanging down from your branches,
O ancient banyan tree,
You stand still day and night, like an ascetic at his
penances,
Do you ever remember the child whose fancy played
with your shadows?
Alas! that banyan tree is no more, nor the piece of 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 further edge of our inner garden. Through these are seen
the "Singhi's Garden" with its cluster of huts[5] and tank, and on the
edge of the tank the dairy of our milkwoman, Tara; still further on,
mixed up with the tree-tops, the various shapes and different heights of
the terraced roofs of Calcutta, flashing back the blazing whiteness of
the midday sun, stretch right away into the grayish blue of the eastern
horizon. And some of these far distant dwellings from which stand
forth their roofed stair-ways leading up to the terrace, look as if with
uplifted finger and a wink they are hinting to me of the mysteries of
their interiors. Like the beggar at the palace door who imagines
impossible treasures to be held in the strong rooms closed to him, I can
hardly tell of the wealth of play and freedom which these unknown
dwellings seem to me crowded with. From the furthest depth of the sky
full of burning sunshine overhead the thin shrill cry of a kite reaches
my ear; and from the lane adjoining Singhi's Garden comes up, past the
houses silent in their noonday slumber, the sing-song of the
bangle-seller--_chai choori chai_ ... and my whole being would fly away
from the work-a-day world.
My father hardly ever stayed at home, he was constantly roaming about.
His rooms on the third storey used to remain shut up. I would pass my
hands through the venetian shutters, and thus opening the latch get the
door open, and spend the afternoon lying motionless on his sofa at the
south end. First of all it was a room always closed, and then there was
the stolen entry, this gave it a deep flavour of mystery; further the
broad empty expanse of terrace to the south, glowing in the rays of the
sun would set me day-dreaming.
There was yet another attraction. The water-works had just been started
in Calcutta, and in the first exuberance of its triumphant entry it did
not stint even the Indian quarters of their supply. In that golden age
of pipe water, it used to flow even up to my father's third storey
rooms. And turning on the shower tap I would indulge to my heart's
content in an untimely bath. Not so much for the comfort of it, as to
give rein to my desire to do just as I fancied. The alternation of the
joy of liberty, and the fear of being caught, made that shower of
municipal water send arrows of delight thrilling into me.
It was perhaps because the possibility of contact with the outside was
so remote that the joy of it came to me so much more readily. When
material is in profusion, the mind gets lazy and leaves everything to
it, forgetting that for a successful feast of joy its internal equipment
counts for more than the external. This is the chief lesson which his
infant state has to teach to man. There his possessions are few and
trivial, yet he needs no more for his happiness. The world of play is
spoilt for the unfortunate youngster who is burdened with an unlimited
quantity of playthings.
To call our inner garden a garden is to say a deal too much. Its
properties consisted of a citron tree, a couple of plum trees of
different varieties, and a row of cocoanut trees. In the centre was a
paved circle the cracks of which various grasses and weeds had invaded
and planted in them their victorious standards. Only those flowering
plants which refused to die of neglect continued uncomplainingly to
perform their respective duties without casting any aspersions on the
gardener. In the northern corner was a rice-husking shed, where the
inmates of the inner apartments would occasionally foregather when
household necessity demanded. This last vestige of rural life has since
owned defeat and slunk away ashamed and unnoticed.
None the less I suspect that Adam's garden of Eden could hardly have
been better adorned than this one of ours; for he and his paradise were
alike naked; they needed not to be furnished with material things. It is
only since his tasting of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and till
he can fully digest it, that man's need for external furniture and
embellishment persistently grows. Our inner garden was my paradise; it
was enough for me. I well remember how in the early autumn dawn I would
run there as soon as I was awake. A scent of dewy grass and foliage
would rush to meet me, and the morning with its cool fresh sunlight
would peep out at me over the top of the Eastern garden wall from below
the trembling tassels of the cocoanut palms.
There is another piece of vacant land to the north of the house which to
this day we call the _golabari_ (barn house). The name shows that in
some remote past this must have been the place where the year's store of
grain used to be kept in a barn. Then, as with brother and sister in
infancy, the likeness between town and country was visible all over. Now
the family resemblance can hardly be traced. This _golabari_ would be my
holiday haunt if I got the chance. It would hardly be correct to say
that I went there to play--it was the place not play, which drew me. Why
this was so, is difficult to tell. Perhaps its being a deserted bit of
waste land lying in an out-of-the-way corner gave it its charm for me.
It was entirely outside the living quarters and bore no stamp of
usefulness; moreover it was as unadorned as it was useless, for no one
had ever planted anything there; it was doubtless for these reasons that
this desert spot offered no resistance to the free play of the boy's
imagination. Whenever I got any loop-hole to evade the vigilance of my
warders and could contrive to reach the _golabari_ I felt I had a
holiday indeed.
There was yet another place in our house which I have even yet not
succeeded in finding out. A little girl playmate of my own age called
this the "King's palace."[6] "I have just been there," she would
sometimes tell me. But somehow the propitious moment never turned up
when she could take me along with her. That was a wonderful place, and
its playthings were as wonderful as the games that were played there. It
seemed to me it must be somewhere very near--perhaps in the first or
second storey; the only thing was one never seemed to be able to get
there. How often have I asked my companion, "Only tell me, is it really
inside the house or outside?" And she would always reply, "No, no, it's
in this very house." I would sit and wonder: "Where then can it be?
Don't I know all the rooms of the house?" Who the king might be I never
cared to inquire; where his palace is still remains undiscovered; this
much was clear--the king's palace was within our house.
Looking back on childhood's days the thing that recurs most often is the
mystery which used to fill both life and world. Something undreamt of
was lurking everywhere and the uppermost question every day was: when,
Oh! when would we come across it? It was as if nature held something in
her closed hands and was smilingly asking us: "What d'you think I have?"
What was impossible for her to have was the thing we had no idea of.
Well do I remember the custard apple seed which I had planted and kept
in a corner of the south verandah, and used to water every day. The
thought that the seed might possibly grow into a tree kept me in a great
state of fluttering wonder. Custard apple seeds still have the habit of
sprouting, but no longer to the accompaniment of that feeling of wonder.
The fault is not in the custard apple but in the mind. We had once
stolen some rocks from an elder cousin's rockery and started a little
rockery of our own. The plants which we sowed in its interstices were
cared for so excessively that it was only because of their vegetable
nature that they managed to put up with it till their untimely death.
Words cannot recount the endless joy and wonder which this miniature
mountain-top held for us. We had no doubt that this creation of ours
would be a wonderful thing to our elders also. The day that we sought to
put this to the proof, however, the hillock in the corner of our room,
with all its rocks, and all its vegetation, vanished. The knowledge that
the schoolroom floor was not a proper foundation for the erection of a
mountain was imparted so rudely, and with such suddenness, that it gave
us a considerable shock. The weight of stone of which the floor was
relieved settled on our minds when we realised the gulf between our
fancies and the will of our elders.
How intimately did the life of the world throb for us in those days!
Earth, water, foliage and sky, they all spoke to us and would not be
disregarded. How often were we struck by the poignant regret that we
could only see the upper storey of the earth and knew nothing of its
inner storey. All our planning was as to how we could pry beneath its
dust-coloured cover. If, thought we, we could drive in bamboo after
bamboo, one over the other, we might perhaps get into some sort of touch
with its inmost depths.
During the _Magh_ festival a series of wooden pillars used to be planted
round the outer courtyard for supporting the chandeliers. Digging holes
for these would begin on the first of _Magh_. The preparations for
festivity are ever interesting to young folk. But this digging had a
special attraction for me. Though I had watched it done year after
year--and seen the hole grow bigger and bigger till the digger had
completely disappeared inside, and yet nothing extraordinary, nothing
worthy of the quest of prince or knight, had ever appeared--yet every
time I had the feeling that the lid being lifted off a chest of mystery.
I felt that a little bit more digging would do it. Year after year
passed, but that bit never got done. There was a pull at the curtain but
it was not drawn. The elders, thought I, can do whatever they please,
why do they rest content with such shallow delving? If we young folk had
the ordering of it, the inmost mystery of the earth would no longer be
allowed to remain smothered in its dust covering.
And the thought that behind every part of the vault of blue reposed the
mysteries of the sky would also spur our imaginings. When our Pundit, in
illustration of some lesson in our Bengali science primer, told us that
the blue sphere was not an enclosure, how thunderstruck we were! "Put
ladder upon ladder," said he, "and go on mounting away, but you will
never bump your head." He must be sparing of his ladders, I opined, and
questioned with a rising inflection, "And what if we put more ladders,
and more, and more?" When I realised that it was fruitless multiplying
ladders I remained dumbfounded pondering over the matter. Surely, I
concluded, such an astounding piece of news must be known only to those
who are the world's schoolmasters!