3_rd Kartik_ (_October_) 1891.
It was the _Kojagar_ full moon, and I was slowly pacing the riverside
conversing with myself. It could hardly be called a conversation, as I was
doing all the talking and my imaginary companion all the listening. The
poor fellow had no chance of speaking up for himself, for was not mine the
power to compel him helplessly to answer like a fool?
But what a night it was! How often have I tried to write of such, but
never got it done! There was not a line of ripple on the river; and from
away over there, where the farthest shore of the distant main stream is
seen beyond the other edge of the midway belt of sand, right up to this
shore, glimmers a broad band of moonlight. Not a human being, not a boat
in sight; not a tree, nor blade of grass on the fresh-formed island
sand-bank.
It seemed as though a desolate moon was rising upon a devastated earth; a
random river wandering through a lifeless solitude; a long-drawn
fairy-tale coming to a close over a deserted world,--all the kings and the
princesses, their ministers and friends and their golden castles vanished,
leaving the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers and the Unending Moor, over
which the adventurous princes fared forth, wanly gleaming in the pale
moonlight. I was pacing up and down like the last pulse-beats of this
dying world. Every one else seemed to be on the opposite shore--the shore
of life--where the British Government and the Nineteenth Century hold
sway, and tea and cigarettes.