"consumption;" this disease
is now detected and cured in its germ.]

Vyora, himself an emaciated boy, unfitted for physical labour, was the
eldest of many brothers and sisters, who looked up to him in their
hunger. He was driven to beg their food.

After the poor man had passed easily all the ordeals, I appointed him "a
Character-Diver," to discover the qualities and detect the faults of
little children,[2] and raised him from indigence to affluence.

[Footnote 2: See p. 19.]

The ability, industry, and wisdom of the man, and the good he did were
beyond all praise, and I soon appointed him head of all the
Character-Divers in Montalluyah.

This incident, with many others, engaged my most serious reflection. But
for an accident, the powers of a truly superior mind would have been
lost to humanity! Vyora was but the type of numbers, evidencing how
capriciously wealth and honours were then distributed.

III.

PERSEVERANCE.

"Go onward! lose not faith. Let the goodness of God support you,
and the beauty and fruitfulness of the work cheer you; and when you
are blest with success forget not the source whence all blessings
come."

Several years passed before my plans were matured. I reduced all to
writing. On one side of the page I noted my resolutions, with the means
of carrying them out; on the other side, every objection that could be
raised: on a third page I wrote down the answers. Every objection was
invited, every difficulty anticipated, and every detail thoroughly
weighed; nothing was thought too great or too insignificant.

I submitted the whole to my wisest councillors, and encouraged them to
speak their inmost thoughts. They were lost in admiration, but entreated
me to abandon my design. My life, they said, would be the penalty were I
to attempt to carry out any part of my projects.

Some said that the design would be beautiful as the subject of a poem--
as the aspiration of a great mind to arrive at an ideal perfection,
which could not however be realised until evil itself had ceased to
exist. That to attempt to move the Mestua Mountain[1] would be a task
not less hopeless: that I might as well endeavour to walk up our great
Cataract[2] without being engulfed in the sea of foaming waters! Not one
offered encouragement to proceed with the good work.

[Footnote 1: Supposed to be the largest and firmest of
mountains, which, since its first upheaving,