im, saying: "You have violated your
trust, and infringed the terms of your engagement." He replied: "O king,
the education is the same, but their capacities are different!" Though
silver and gold are extracted from stones, yet it is not in every stone
that gold and silver are found. The Sohail, or star Canopus, is shedding
his rays all over the globe. In one place he produces common leather, in
another, or in Yamin, that called Adim, or perfumed.

VII

I heard a certain learned senior observing to a disciple:--"If the sons
of Adam were as solicitous after Providence, or God, as they are after
their means of sustenance, their places in Paradise would surpass those
of the angels." God did not overlook thee in that state when thou wert a
senseless embryo in thy mother's womb. He bestowed upon thee a soul,
reason, temper, intellect, symmetry, speech, judgment, understanding,
and reflection. He accommodated thy hands with ten fingers, and
suspended two arms from thy shoulders. Canst thou now suppose, O
good-for-nothing wretch, that he will forget to provide thy daily bread?

VIII

I observed an Arab who was informing his son:--"_O my child, God will
ask thee on the day of judgment: What hast thou done in this life? but
he will not inquire of thee: Whence didst thou derive thy origin?_" That
is, they (or God) will ask, saying: "What are your works?" But he will
not question you, saying: "Who is your father?" The covering of the
Caabah at Mecca, which the pilgrims kiss from devotion, is not prized
from its being the fabric of a silk-worm; for a while it associated with
a venerable friend, and became, in consequence, venerable like him.

IX

They have related in the books of philosophers that scorpions are not
brought forth according to the common course of nature, as other animals
are, but that they eat their way through their mother's wombs, tear open
their bellies, and thus make themselves a passage into the world; and
that the fragments of skin which we find in scorpions' holes corroborate
this fact. On one occasion I was stating this strange event to a good
and great man, when he answered: "My heart is bearing testimony to the
truth of this remark; nor can it be otherwise, for as they have thus
behaved towards their parents in their youth, so they are approved and
beloved in their riper years." On his death-bed a father exhorted his
son, saying: "O generous youth, keep in mind this maxim: 'Whoever is
ungratefu