He was a dreamy boy, in whose soul the opposite passions reveled. Gentle as the dove, yet, under aggression, fierce as the tiger. He loved as angels love; hated as fiends hate. Framed as delicately as the gazelle, yet every sinew was endowed with the tenacity of steel. At the age of manhood, I, his old preceptor, bowed to the superior endowments of my pupil, but knew not the fountain of his knowledge.
I have said he was a dreamy boy, yet he had made the broad pages of nature his book of knowledge, even while dreaming. The fertile earth presented her abundant lap overflowing with fruit to delight his palate; the flowers peered in his face with their variegated eyes, and sent forth their incense, even while he trod upon them. The cadence of the waterfall, the low twittering of the wearied bird as it flitted to its fledglings in the nest, and the murmuring of the passing breeze as it struggled through the grove, were to him a lullaby that charmed to sleep as the angels sleep. Nature was his mother, and she nursed him with play-things as her child.
I have seen him by the small streams composing songs to the music that the dimpled waters babbled, until his rosy cheeks dimpled and laughed in concert with the rippling brook, as if it were a thing of life, rejoicing in its existence, as his own pure heart rejoiced. They laughed and babbled together.
On the wood-clad mountains, at midnight, when the elements battled, I have seen him straining his feeble voice to sound the master-key that attunes to universal harmony; and having caught it, he would spring like the antelope to a lofty waterfall to discover the same note there; and then turn up his bright face to the stars that smiled upon him, and laugh, expecting to hear them respond to his note as they revolved on their eternal axes. His dark eyes smiled, and the conscious stars smiled back in the heaven of his dark eyes, which danced with delight in the diamond rays of the stars.
Flowers were books to him, and from every leaf he read wisdom fragrant with truth. He cultivated them as a father would his last child. The little birds were his companions, and every morning he joined their concert until the tiny minstrels seemed to imagine that he was the leader of their orchestra. All nature was to him one mighty minister, bestowing all, while he asked from nature no more than the blessed privilege of imitating her, by bestowing on his fellow man all in return. He had a dog, whose former owner had thrown into a stream to drown as worthless. Selim swam and saved the ill-looking cur, who followed him ever after until it appeared that instinct trod close upon the heel of reason. Selim in his turn, while bathing, became exhausted, and sinking beneath the stream, the dog plunged in and saved his dying master. Was this instinct or reason? It matters not, but Selim perceived that the Prophet had made his humanity toward a friendless dog the means of prolonging his own existence here. Despise not little things, cried Mehemet, for the smallest is of magnitude in the sight of the Prophet. A straw may break the back of the overburthened; one word may consign a man to poverty or prosperity, one deed to hell or heaven.
Selim’s wants were few, his fortune ample, which he bestowed upon the deserving with as liberal a hand as it had been bestowed upon himself. Still he labored in the pursuit he had adopted, not for self-aggrandizement, but to assist others; and he knew not why man should be a sluggard while all nature is incessantly at work. The bee and ant work in their season—and even the spider too.
His garden blossomed as Eden, and the flowers offered up their grateful incense even as they faded and died upon the universal altar of Nature’s God. His aviary from morn until night was vocal, and when the flaming chariot of the bright eye of day was whirled by fiery-footed steeds over the eastern hills, I have seen him with his flute, surrounded by nature’s tiny choristers pouring forth their matins until some note in the universal harmony touched the heart of his poor shaggy cur who sported around and tried to bark in unison. Then Selim laughed outright, and the birds stopped their hymns, and seemed to laugh with Selim, and the poor dog slunk away abashed, and slyly laughed at his miserable failure.
He married the dark-eyed Biribi. Selim was a poet; his soul reveled alike in tempest or sunshine, and his voice was as musical as the wings of the bee when he distills honey. He possessed the sweets of the bee, and his sting also. Biribi was abjectly poor, but in Selim’s eyes as full of truth and as beautiful as the houries. He exclaimed, I will raise poverty above oppression, and place virtue where all her handmaids may minister to her enjoyment. Alas! it was but a young poet’s dream—and such dreams are too frequently disturbed by palpable agony. Thus spoke Mehemet.
He had a friend who was his fellow-student while under my charge. Selim loved him as a brother, and when he married he requested Zadak to dwell with him. Neither house, garden, nor fields could be more beautiful, while his flocks and herds were nature’s ornaments. Such was Selim’s Eden.
Zadak borrowed a portion of his fortune, which he squandered; but the poor boy simply replied, “no matter, we require but little, and enough still remains to make us happy. Thank the Prophet for that which we still possess, and repine not for that which we have lost. We can labor with our fellow-men.”