As this good old man had no time to inspect, nor inclination to interfere with, the private proceedings of his guests, there arose a universal outbreak of looseness and corruption of manners to which my uncle fell a victim. But fortunately, my father, conscious of his own responsibility as a moral agent, and desirous of becoming independent, escaped the general contagion which was then making dreadful havoc among his friends. But he could not save his younger brother, who chose his own course, and ran headlong to destruction. Applying himself diligently to the pursuit of theology, my father soon was able to take care of the temple services, and to help his uncle in the discharge of his priestly functions. By and by, serving as an assistant to a Brahmun,--the priest over a wealthy family in Calcutta,--he stood on a firm footing, married a wife, and determined to build a house and remove his family into it. There was a piece of land close by his aunt’s, which he bought with a small sum for the following reason. There were some cocoa-nut, mango, and other wild trees on that lot which were, as they believed, the homes of demons, so hardly anybody dared to go to gather fruits thereon. It happened that my father, being a young man of courage and good common sense, fearlessly used to go there after the fruits which otherwise would have been left on the ground untouched by human hands. The owner of the lot, finding that my father enjoyed all the fruits of his trees which he had given up for fear of demons, thought it prudent to sell it to him for a reasonable sum. My father availed himself of the opportunity, and secured the lot with all its trees, and speedily built a house on it. He often used to say, he had driven all the demons from his place with “prayer and fasting” unto the god Rama. It would have been difficult for him to have moved to his new house, had it not been that my mother’s courage was strong as his. For this new place had so bad a reputation that her female neighbors did not dare to call on her in the evening, for fear of the demons. She believed in their existence, but feared them not, saying, that if we behave well and do not offend them, no demon would trouble us in the least. I used to hear from her the stories of the demons coming invisibly near the house in the shades of midnight, and filling the place with the fragrance of some exquisite flowers. Such fragrant flowers she knew did not grow in the neighborhood. Four or five years after my father had removed to his new house a misfortune happened to the family. He was on a visit to a friend in a neighboring town, and my mother was left in care of a female servant. It was dark midnight when “the object on the lap could not be recognized;” she was sleeping in a room with her infant Joguth,--myself,--and the favorite domestic was in her own bed close by. Some burglars, taking advantage of my father’s absence, broke through the house, and robbed it almost of its last penny.