INDIAN NABOBS. 
and best cooked that could possibly be, but somehow 
or other — how could it be ? — we neither relished or 
enjoyed it so much as that abominable stuff cooked 
by ‘‘ Periya Karuppen ” in the morning of life. It is. 
now getting well on in the afiernoon, the sun de- 
scends and the shadows lengthen, faster and faster our 
sun descends, longer and longer lengthen the shadows, 
it dra’ws towards evening, and how fast it comes on. 
My friends who are yet in your forenoon, you think 
the time long ; weary and toilsome is the way ; will 
it never be noon? ‘‘Shall we never be a P. 1).?” 
If your time is long, work, work with all your might, 
for the afternoon will come, and if you have not worked 
in the forenoon, you will be less able to do so in the 
aft( moon. Besides, how often have you heard the old 
saying, heard ! why experienced it over and over again — 
“ that an hour’s work in the morning or forenoon is 
worth any time in tlie afternoon.” But what is the 
use of working in the afternoon : in the late after- 
noon ? Use your forenoon well with wdsdom and dis- 
cretion, always keeping in view that the after- 
noon is coming, and that during the forenoon you 
must lay up some store for the evening of your 
days. No rest in the afternoon : what more natural? 
Why should you waste or squander in your fore- 
noon on folly or worse than folly what you most 
assuredly will want or feel the want of in your after- 
noon when obliged to work, pei-haps, work hard? In 
the afternoon, you may have many a self-reproach, 
“If I had only been careful in the forenoon, this would 
not have been, but it is too late now.” Yes, it is too 
late ; and bear this well in the mind, stamp it on your 
hearts, “Nothing is too late in the forenoon of life, 
but most things are in the afternoon, if deferred till 
then. ” 
It is well on in the afternoon of our life, and w’e still 
eat and enjoy rice and curry : in fact, often eat it 
when we could not relish anything else. So here is a 
case of the force of old habits and customs, upon which 
subject some remarks have been made, in a previous 
chapter. Now, is it not strange, this sudden lapse 
into somewhat melancholy sentiments ? What have 
the opening words of the chapter got to do with all 
this ? Let us endeavour to trace the matter to its 
source. In times long gone past, many of us have 
seen, or at all events heard of, the now extinc*". spe- 
cies of “ Indian nabobs.” We quite recollect them, 
people very irritable self-willed, and difficult to deal 
with ; they were always right, never wrong, and would 
have everything their owm way, and if than was crossed 
in anything, however trifling, the result would be no 
trifle, no trifling ! These nabobs had one special char-. 
