'A rough diamond;' no Burman would understand this saying. The value of a diamond is that it can be polished. As long as it remains in the rough, it has no more beauty than a lump of mud. If your heart be good, so, too, will be your manners. A good tree will bring forth good fruit. If the fruit be rotten, can the tree be good? Not so. If your manners are bad, so, too, is your heart. To be courteous, even tempered, to be tolerant and full of sympathy, these are the proofs of an inward goodness. You cannot have one without the other. Outward appearances are not deceptive, but are true. Therefore they strive after even temper. Hot-tempered as they are, easily aroused to wrath, easily awakened to pleasure, men with the passions of a child, they have very great command over themselves. They are ashamed of losing their temper; they look upon it as a disgrace. We are often proud of it; we think sometimes we do well to be angry. So they are very patient, very long-suffering, accepting with resignation the troubles of this world, the kicks and spurns of fortune, secure in this, that each man's self is in his own keeping. If there be trouble for to-day, what can it matter if you do but command yourself? If others be discourteous to you, that cannot hurt you, if you do not allow yourself to be discourteous in return. Take care of your own soul, sure that in the end you will win, either in this life or in some other, that which you deserve. What you have made your soul fit for, that you will obtain, sooner or later, whether it be evil or whether it be good. The law of righteousness is for ever this, that what a man deserves that he will obtain. And in the end, if you cultivate your soul with unwearying patience, striving always after what is good, purifying yourself from the lust of life, you will come unto that lake where all desire shall be washed away. CHAPTER XX 'NOBLESSE OBLIGE' 'Sooner shall the cleft rock reunite so as to make a whole, than may he who kills any living being be admitted into our society.'--_Acceptance into the Monkhood._