"
She held the flowers tenderly in the cup of her hands, and began to gaze
at them with bent head. After a few moments' silence she raised her
head
again, and said to me: "You never look at these flowers; therefore they
become stale to you. If you would only look into them, then your
reading and writing would go to the winds."
She tied the flowers together in the end of her robe, and placed them,
in an attitude of worship, on the top of her head, saying reverently:
"Let me carry my God with me."
While she did this, I felt that flowers in our rooms do not receive
their due meed of loving care at our hands. When we stick them in
vases, they are more like a row of naughty schoolboys standing on a form
to be punished.
The Devotee came again the same evening, and sat by my feet on the
terrace of the roof.
"I gave away those flowers," she said, "as I went from house to house
this morning, singing God's name. Beni, the head man of our village,
laughed at me for my devotion, and said: `Why do you waste all this
devotion on Him? Don't you know He is reviled up and down the
countryside?' Is that true, my God? Is it true that they are hard
upon you?"
For a moment I shrank into myself.
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