I have said he was a dreamy boy, yet he had made the broad pages of nature his book of knowledge, even while dreaming. The fertile earth presented her abundant lap overflowing with fruit to delight his palate; the flowers peered in his face with their variegated eyes, and sent forth their incense, even while he trod upon them. The cadence of the waterfall, the low twittering of the wearied bird as it flitted to its fledglings in the nest, and the murmuring of the passing breeze as it struggled through the grove, were to him a lullaby that charmed to sleep as the angels sleep. Nature was his mother, and she nursed him with play-things as her child. I have seen him by the small streams composing songs to the music that the dimpled waters babbled, until his rosy cheeks dimpled and laughed in concert with the rippling brook, as if it were a thing of life, rejoicing in its existence, as his own pure heart rejoiced. They laughed and babbled together. On the wood-clad mountains, at midnight, when the elements battled, I have seen him straining his feeble voice to sound the master-key that attunes to universal harmony; and having caught it, he would spring like the antelope to a lofty waterfall to discover the same note there; and then turn up his bright face to the stars that smiled upon him, and laugh, expecting to hear them respond to his note as they revolved on their eternal axes. His dark eyes smiled, and the conscious stars smiled back in the heaven of his dark eyes, which danced with delight in the diamond rays of the stars. Flowers were books to him, and from every leaf he read wisdom fragrant with truth. He cultivated them as a father would his last child. The little birds were his companions, and every morning he joined their concert until the tiny minstrels seemed to imagine that he was the leader of their orchestra. All nature was to him one mighty minister, bestowing all, while he asked from nature no more than the blessed privilege of imitating her, by bestowing on his fellow man all in return. He had a dog, whose former owner had thrown into a stream to drown as worthless. Selim swam and saved the ill-looking cur, who followed him ever after until it appeared that instinct trod close upon the heel of reason. Selim in his turn, while bathing, became exhausted, and sinking beneath the stream, the dog plunged in and saved his dying master. Was this instinct or reason? It matters not, but Selim perceived that the Prophet had made his humanity toward a friendless dog the means of prolonging his own existence here. Despise not little things, cried Mehemet, for the smallest is of magnitude in the sight of the Prophet. A straw may break the back of the overburthened; one word may consign a man to poverty or prosperity, one deed to hell or heaven.