l-fellows called him the
wild ass on account of his unruliness, he has remained always the same.
He was stronger than most of them, and yet they knew no greater pleasure
than putting him in a rage."

"Children are so cruel!" said Ameni. "They judge only by appearances, and
never enquire into the causes of them. The deficient are as guilty in
their eyes as the idle, and Paaker could put forward small claims to
their indulgence. I encourage freedom and merriment," he continued
turning to the priests from Cheraw, "among our disciples, for in
fettering the fresh enjoyment of youth we lame our best assistant. The
excrescences on the natural growth of boys cannot be more surely or
painlessly extirpated than in their wild games. The school-boy is the
school-boy's best tutor."

"But Paaker," said the priest Meriapu, "was not improved by the
provocations of his companions. Constant contests with them increased
that roughness which now makes him the terror of his subordinates and
alienates all affection."

"He is the most unhappy of all the many youths, who were intrusted to my
care," said Ameni, "and I believe I know why,--he never had a childlike
disposition, even when in years he was still a child, and the Gods had
denied him the heavenly gift of good humor. Youth should be modest, and
he was assertive from his childhood. He took the sport of his companions
for earnest, and his father, who was unwise only as a tutor, encouraged
him to resistance instead of to forbearance, in the idea that he thus
would be steeled to the hard life of a Mohar."

[The severe duties of the Mohar are well known from the papyrus of
Anastasi I. in the Brit. Mus., which has been ably treated by F.
Chabas, Voyage d'un Egyptien.]

"I have often heard the deeds of the Mohar spoken of," said the old
priest from Chennu, "yet I do not exactly know what his office requires
of him."

"He has to wander among the ignorant and insolent people of hostile
provinces, and to inform himself of the kind and number of the
population, to investigate the direction of the mountains, valleys, and
rivers, to set forth his observations, and to deliver them to the house
of war,

[Corresponding to our minister of war. A person of the highest
importance even in the earliest times.]

so that the march of the troops may be guided by them."

"The Mohar then must be equally skilled as a warrior and as a Scribe."

"As thou sayest; and Paaker's father was