7_th April_ 1892.
The river is getting low, and the water in this arm of it is hardly more
than waist-deep anywhere. So it is not at all extraordinary that the boat
should be anchored in mid-stream. On the bank, to my right, the ryots are
ploughing and cows are now and then brought down to the water's edge for a
drink. To the left there are the mango and cocoanut trees of the old
Shelidah garden above, and on the bathing slope below there are village
women washing clothes, filling water jars, bathing, laughing and gossiping
in their provincial dialect.
The younger girls never seem to get through their sporting in the water;
it is a delight to hear their careless, merry laughter. The men gravely
take their regulation number of dips and go away, but girls are on much
more intimate terms with the water. Both alike babble and chatter and
ripple and sparkle in the same simple and natural manner; both may
languish and fade away under a scorching glare, yet both can take a blow
without hopelessly breaking under it. The hard world, which, but for them,
would be barren, cannot fathom the mystery of the soft embrace of their
arms.
Tennyson has it that woman to man is as water to wine. I feel to-day it
should be as water is to land. Woman is more at home with the water,
laving in it, playing with it, holding her gatherings beside it; and
while, for her, other burdens are not seemly, the carrying of water from
the spring, the well, the bank of river or pool, has ever been held to
become her.