"When the vizier heard this, he applauded the king's understanding, and assented that what he had pronounced was unanswerable.
"'Yet, nevertheless,' he said, 'as the boy, if bred among the thieves, would have taken their manners, so is your servant hopeful that he might receive instruction in the society of upright men; for he is still a boy, and it is written, that every child is born in the faith of Islam, and his parents corrupt him. The son of Noah, associated with the wicked, lost his power of prophecy; the dog of the Seven Sleepers, following the good, became a man.'
"Then others of the courtiers joined in the intercession, and the king said,—
"'I have assented, but I do not think it well.'
"They bred the youth in indulgence and affluence, and appointed an accomplished tutor to educate him, and he became learned and gained great applause in the sight of every one. The king smiled when the vizier spoke of this, and said,—
"'Thou hast been nourished by our milk, and hast grown with us; who afterwards gave thee intelligence that thy father was a wolf?'
"A few years passed;—a company of the vagrants of the neighborhood were near; they connected themselves with the boy; a league of association was formed; and, at an opportunity, the boy destroyed the vizier and his children, carried off vast booty, and fixed himself in the place of his father in the cavern of the robbers. The king bit the hand of astonishment with the teeth of reflection, and said,—
"'How can any one make a good sword from bad iron? The worthless, O Philosopher, does not, by instruction, become worthy. Rain, though not otherwise than benignant, produces tulips in gardens and rank weeds in nitrous ground.'"
Yet, notwithstanding Sadi and some other wise ones, here, as thieves, are the faces of boys that cannot be naturally vicious,—boys of good instincts, beyond all possible question,—and that only need a mother's hand to smooth back the clustering hair from the forehead, to discover the future residence of plentiful and upright reason. The face of a boy, now in Sing Sing for burglary, and who bears a name which over the continent of North America is identified with the ideas of large combination and enterprise, is especially noticeable for the clear eyes, and frank, promising look.
That tale of Sadi will do well enough when Aesop tells it of a serpent;—he, indeed, can change his skin and be a serpent still; but when the old Sufi, or any one else, tells it of a boy, let us doubt.