have been thoroughly weaned from all things
belonging to a child. I am now a strong boy, and in five years I shall
be a man. Allah made the world, and made it to grow. It has been
growing ever since it was made. Allah made infants; infants grow if
they live; they become boys--boys become men. When I was an infant I
had no understanding nor strength. Thou, my mother, didst point out to
me my nourishment. I flourished on it, and in time was weaned. In a
little time my strength availed me to put my own food into my own lips.
I flourished on that food, and I became stronger still. Later I
understood language, and answered thee with childish love and affection.
I romped in the harem, and was happy. Then I was permitted to go out
of doors unattended by my female attendant. I bathed in the sea. I
learned to swim, and acquired games which boys learn one from another.
I learned to ride on horses; I learned to shoot, and day by day I was
getting stronger in body and limb, and with my strength has begun to
grow my thoughts. These thoughts are thoughts of manhood, of duty; and
the business of life, which I am beginning to learn, is serious.
Mother, dear mother, my health required, when I was strong enough to
enjoy out-of-door life, that I should run about and leap. Mother, my
happiness demands that my thoughts should be humoured as my strength
was. I find I am made of two parts--body and mind. Neither may be
longer neglected--both must be humoured, or I die. If my body is not
exercised out in the open air--if I be imprisoned in a harem, I shall
become dwarfed. I shall not grow. If my mind is not exercised by
seeing, and talking with many people--if I see no more than my mother
and my mother's slaves--my mind cannot grow. I shall know nothing, and
I shall become a fool. I, the son of Amer, the son of Osman, will be
sneered at. It may not be, dear mother. I must go away, and learn the
lesson of a man's life."

"But, my dear son," said Amina, entreatingly, for she had been
astonished and amazed at the amount of logic which the boy, to her
surprise, had put forth in his statement. "Consider, thou art yet
young, and that thou mayst wait awhile yet before journeying to that
horrid land of negro savages. What canst thou find there to learn?
Seeing lions and leopards, and elephants and ugly crocodiles, will not
ripen thy mind. Surely thou art cruel to think of leaving me alone
here--both my lord Amer and my son at