While I was wasting my time with dumb companions, my eldest brother and cousins were quite able to read and write, things which to my mind were absolutely past comprehension and belief. Unable to compel me to attend any school, my mother at last applied to an old negro servant of my grandfather's, who was then living close to us with his white wife and tawny children. When a boy he had been bought by my grandfather from the slave-dealers, and as the emancipation of slaves is considered the most pious act a Mohammedan can perform, my grandfather freed him soon after buying him, gave him some property, and arranged a marriage for him. This old man did not approve of my undutiful conduct towards my mother. In accordance with a promise which he willingly made to her, one morning he came to our house and gravely asked me to go with him to school. I excused myself on the plea that the books and papers previously procured for me had been eaten by rats. He said he would buy new ones for me in the school, and I told him it was no use buying them, because I did not understand them. Then the big black man, showing his white teeth angrily, moved towards me, and caught me by the ear with his rough, hard hand, and practically dragged me as far as the school, amidst the malicious chuckling of my brother and cousins. During lesson-times my thoughts flew after my geese and pigeons. Many a time was I led to school most unwillingly in the same fashion, and it took several months for the master to persuade me, by much corporal chastisement, to take the slightest interest in my lessons.