Selim’s wants were few, his fortune ample, which he bestowed upon the deserving with as liberal a hand as it had been bestowed upon himself. Still he labored in the pursuit he had adopted, not for self-aggrandizement, but to assist others; and he knew not why man should be a sluggard while all nature is incessantly at work. The bee and ant work in their season—and even the spider too. His garden blossomed as Eden, and the flowers offered up their grateful incense even as they faded and died upon the universal altar of Nature’s God. His aviary from morn until night was vocal, and when the flaming chariot of the bright eye of day was whirled by fiery-footed steeds over the eastern hills, I have seen him with his flute, surrounded by nature’s tiny choristers pouring forth their matins until some note in the universal harmony touched the heart of his poor shaggy cur who sported around and tried to bark in unison. Then Selim laughed outright, and the birds stopped their hymns, and seemed to laugh with Selim, and the poor dog slunk away abashed, and slyly laughed at his miserable failure. He married the dark-eyed Biribi. Selim was a poet; his soul reveled alike in tempest or sunshine, and his voice was as musical as the wings of the bee when he distills honey. He possessed the sweets of the bee, and his sting also. Biribi was abjectly poor, but in Selim’s eyes as full of truth and as beautiful as the houries. He exclaimed, I will raise poverty above oppression, and place virtue where all her handmaids may minister to her enjoyment. Alas! it was but a young poet’s dream—and such dreams are too frequently disturbed by palpable agony. Thus spoke Mehemet. He had a friend who was his fellow-student while under my charge. Selim loved him as a brother, and when he married he requested Zadak to dwell with him. Neither house, garden, nor fields could be more beautiful, while his flocks and herds were nature’s ornaments. Such was Selim’s Eden. Zadak borrowed a portion of his fortune, which he squandered; but the poor boy simply replied, “no matter, we require but little, and enough still remains to make us happy. Thank the Prophet for that which we still possess, and repine not for that which we have lost. We can labor with our fellow-men.” Biribi became estranged from the pure being who fancied he had made in her bosom a nest for his dove-like heart to sing in. He awoke from a dream of repose to battle with the tempest. Zadak had betrayed him, and the gentle spirit of my boy was crushed between the sledge and the anvil; but the eternal fire that burnt within him, burst forth in one mighty blaze as the sledge fell; and even the sledge and the anvil rejoiced at the fire they had elicited from his heart’s blood.