At the age of twenty-five he took up the more desirable post of camel driver, and was taken into the employ of a wealthy kinswoman, Khadeejeh, whom he afterwards married, although she was fifteen years his senior--a disparity in age which means far more in the East, where physical charm and beauty are the only requisites for a wife, than it does in the West where men look more to the mental endowments of a wife than to the fleeting charm of youth. It is also to Mohammed's credit that his devotion to his first wife never wavered to the day of her death and, indeed, as long as he himself lived he spoke with reverence and deep affection of Khadeejeh. We learn that the next fifteen years were lived in the usual manner of a man of his station. Khadeejeh brought him wealth and this gave him the necessary time and ease in which to meditate, and the never-varying devotion and trust of his faithful wife brought him repose and the power to aid his impoverished uncle, and to be regarded among the tribes as a man of influence. His simple, unostentatious, and even ascetic life during these years was noted. He was known as a man of extremely refined tastes and sensitive though not querulous nature. A commentator says of him: "His constitution was extremely delicate. He was nervously afraid of bodily pain; he would sob and roar under it. Eminently unpractical in the common things of life, he was gifted with mighty powers of imagination, elevation of mind, delicacy and refinement of feeling. "He is more modest than a virgin behind her curtain," it has been said of him. "He was most indulgent to his inferiors and would not allow his awkward little page to be scolded, whatever he did. He was most affectionate toward his family. He was very fond of children, and would stop them in the streets and pat their little cheeks. He never struck anyone in his life. The worst expression he ever made use of in conversation was: 'What has come to him--may his forehead be darkened with mud.' "When asked to curse some one he replied: 'I have not been sent to curse, but to be a mercy to mankind.' He visited the sick, followed any bier he met, accepted the invitation of a slave to dinner, mended his own clothes, milked his goats and waited upon himself. "He never withdrew his hand out of another's palm, and turned not before the other had turned. "He was the most faithful protector of those he protected, the sweetest and most agreeable in conversation; those who saw him were suddenly filled with reverence; those who came to him, loved him. They who described him would say: 'I have never seen his like, either before or after.' "He was, however, very nervous and restless withal, often low-spirited, downcast as to heart and eyes. Yet he would at times suddenly break through these broodings, become gay, talkative, jocular, chiefly among his own."