CHAPTER XXX.
Matilall at Benaras: Home Again.
A Good disposition is created by good advice and good associations: to some it comes early in life, to others later; and from lack of it in early youth great harm happens. As a fire, when it has once caught hold of a jungle, blazes furiously, destroying everything in its path, or as a wind, when it has once got up with any force, on a sudden increases in violence, and hurls down in its course large trees and buildings, so an evil disposition, when it has once been formed in childhood, gradually assumes fearful proportions, if roused into activity by the natural passions of the blood. Bad examples of this are constantly seen; but examples may also be seen of persons long given over to evil thoughts and evil ways becoming virtuous all of a sudden, quite late in life. A conversion like this may have its origin either in good advice or in good companionship. However, it occasionally happens that people come suddenly to their right mind; it may be by chance, it may be by an accident, it may be by a mere word. Such conversions, however, are very rare.
When Matilall returned home from Jessore in despair, he said to his companion: "It is evidently not my destiny to be rich: it is idle therefore for me to seek further for wealth. I am now going to travel for a time in the North-West: will any of you accompany me?" The darling of Fortune may call all men his friends: when a man has wealth he has no need to summon any one to his presence: numbers will crowd to him uninvited, but a poor man
