an early age Mohammed took up the life of a sheep herder, caring for the
herds of his kinsmen. This step became necessary because the once princely
fortune of his noble ancestors had dwindled to almost the extreme of
poverty, but although the occupation of sheep herder was despised by the
tribes, it is said that Mohammed himself in later life often alluded to his
early calling as the time when "God called him."

At the age of twenty-five he took up the more desirable post of camel
driver, and was taken into the employ of a wealthy kinswoman, Khadeejeh,
whom he afterwards married, although she was fifteen years his senior--a
disparity in age which means far more in the East, where physical charm
and beauty are the only requisites for a wife, than it does in the West
where men look more to the mental endowments of a wife than to the fleeting
charm of youth.

It is also to Mohammed's credit that his devotion to his first wife never
wavered to the day of her death and, indeed, as long as he himself lived
he spoke with reverence and deep affection of Khadeejeh.

We learn that the next fifteen years were lived in the usual manner of a
man of his station. Khadeejeh brought him wealth and this gave him the
necessary time and ease in which to meditate, and the never-varying
devotion and trust of his faithful wife brought him repose and the power to
aid his impoverished uncle, and to be regarded among the tribes as a man
of influence.

His simple, unostentatious, and even ascetic life during these years was
noted. He was known as a man of extremely refined tastes and sensitive
though not querulous nature. A commentator says of him:

"His constitution was extremely delicate. He was nervously afraid of bodily
pain; he would sob and roar under it. Eminently unpractical in the common
things of life, he was gifted with mighty powers of imagination, elevation
of mind, delicacy and refinement of feeling.

"He is more modest than a virgin behind her curtain," it has been said of
him.

"He was most indulgent to his inferiors and would not allow his awkward
little page to be scolded, whatever he did. He was most affectionate toward
his family. He was very fond of children, and would stop them in the
streets and pat their little cheeks. He never struck anyone in his life.
The worst expression he ever made use of in conversation was: 'What has
come to him--may his forehead be darkened with mud.'

"When asked to curse some one he repl