" 'Ten years I will allot to the attainment of knowledge, and ten I will pass in foreign countries; I shall be learned, and therefore I shall be honored; every city will shout at my arrival, and every student will solicit my friendship. Twenty years thus passed will store my mind with images which I shall be busy through the rest of my life in combining and comparing. I shall revel in inexhaustible accumulations of intellectual riches; I shall find new pleasures for every moment, and shall never more be weary of myself.
" 'I will not, however, deviate too far from the beaten track of life; but will try what can be found in female delicacy. I will marry a wife as beautiful as the houries, and wise as Zobeide; and with her I will live twenty years within the suburbs of Bagdad, in every pleasure that wealth can purchase, and fancy can invent.
" 'I will then retire to a rural dwelling, pass my days in obscurity and contemplation; and lie silently down on the bed of death. Through my life it shall be my settled resolution, that I will never depend on the smile of princes; that I will never stand exposed to the artifices of courts; I will never pant for public honors, nor disturb my quiet with the affairs of state.' Such was my scheme of life, which I impressed indelibly upon my memory.
"The first part of my ensuing time was to be spent in search of knowledge, and I know not how I was diverted from my design. I had no visible impediments without, nor any ungovernable passion within. I regarded knowledge as the highest honor, and the most engaging pleasure; yet day stole upon day, and month glided after month, till I found that seven years of the first ten had vanished, and left nothing behind them.
"I now postponed my purpose of traveling; for why should I go abroad, while so much remained to be learned at home? I immured myself for four years, and studied the laws of the empire. The fame of my skill reached the judges: I was found able to speak upon doubtful questions, and I was commanded to stand at the footstool of the caliph. I was heard with attention; I was consulted with confidence, and the love of praise fastened on my heart.
"I still wished to see distant countries; listened with rapture to the relations of travelers, and resolved some time to ask my dismission, that I might feast my soul with novelty; but my presence was always necessary, and the stream of business hurried me along. Sometimes, I was afraid lest I should be charged with ingratitude; but I still proposed to travel, and therefore would not confine myself by marriage.
"In my fiftieth year, I began to suspect that the time of my traveling was past; and thought it best to lay hold on the felicity yet in my power, and indulge myself in domestic pleasures. But, at fifty, no man easily finds a woman beautiful as the houries, and wise as Zobeide. I inquired and rejected, consulted and deliberated, till the sixty-second year made me ashamed of wishing to marry. I had now nothing left but retirement; and for retirement I never found a time, till disease forced me from public employment.
"Such was my scheme, and such has been its consequence. With an insatiable thirst for knowledge, I trifled away the years of improvement; with a restless desire of seeing different countries, I have always resided in the same city; with the highest expectation of connubial felicity, I have lived unmarried; and with an unalterable resolution of contemplative retirement, I am going to die within the walls of Bagdad."
Notes.—Bag dad'—A large city of Asiatic Turkey, on the river Tigris.
In the ninth century, it was the greatest center of Moslem power and learning.