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.