My first consciousness, my very first idea or remembrance of anything that I can recall, was on a hot sultry night in the city of Lucknow, in the year 18––, but no matter as to the exact date, for I do not know how old I was then, and do not now know the year in which I was born. I was awakened by the clinking sound of something that caught my ear; then turning my eyes I saw a number of beautiful round glittering things fall into my mother’s lap as she sat upon a charpoy. As I recall the scene, I think there must have been several hundred of these shining pieces. It is strange what an attraction there is in children for metal money, though they know nothing of its value. Is there not a latent love for it in them from a former birth as an inheritance?—but let that rest for the present. My eyes then went to a man, as I now can designate him, for then it did not seem to me that I was conscious of him any more than that he was a thing of life, a being or something very indefinite, beyond my comprehension. I years after, recalled him as an Englishman, rather tall, of blonde complexion, with a cleanly-shaved face, except a heavy well-trimmed moustache. What struck me was the whiteness of his face and hands, so that I took him for a bhut or ghost, and quaking with fear gazed at him. He was standing close to the charpoy looking down upon my mother, into whose lap he had thrown the shining things that I afterward learned were rupees and new, just brought from the treasury. After the clinking of the rupees I heard him say in Hindustani: “I must leave you, pyari. I am going to Wilayat, home, and may never see you again?” “Jaoge! mujh ko chordoge?” said my mother, with trembling lips and a heart-breaking tone. “You are going and will leave me?” she repeated again, so plaintively. “Yes,” he said, “I have got leave and I must go. I have brought you five hundred rupees and hope you will be happy and take good care of the children. I have come to bid you good-bye.” Upon this my mother clasped her hands over her head and bent forward with a wail of anguish that was heart-rending. Amid her tears she exclaimed: “You always told me that I was your bibi, your own dear wife, that you would never leave me, and now you are going and will throw me away as the skin of the mango you have eaten, or as an old coat that you have worn out. You will leave me and go to Wilayat, where you will marry a young mem sahib as all the sahibs do, and she will never know that I am your wife. O Allah! Why did I ever listen to your soft words and become your pyari? Pyari, I have been and true to you in all things. Will you go away and leave me to be called a kusbi by all these people? O Allah! ya Shaitan! why am I thus to be accursed?” Then she swayed back and forth, wailing as if her heart was breaking. She piteously asked, “Why not take me with you, as you often said you would?”