without feet, I was thankful for the bounty of Providence to myself, and
with perfect resignation submitted to my want of shoes."

Thus attuned to the world, Sa'di escapes the depths of misanthropy as
well as the transports of unbridled license and somewhat blustering
swagger into which Omar at times fell. In his simplicity of heart he
says very tenderly of his own work;--

"We give advice in its proper place,
Spending a lifetime in the task.
If it should not touch any one's ear of desire,
The messenger told his tale; it is enough."

That tale is a long one. His apprenticeship was spent in Arabic Bagdad,
sitting at the feet of noted scholars, and taking in knowledge not only
of his own Persian Sufism, but also of the science and learning which
had been gathered in the home of the Abbaside Caliphs. His
journeyman-years took him all through the dominions which were under
Arab influence--in Europe, the Barbary States, Egypt, Abyssinia, Arabia,
Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, India. All these places were visited
before he returned to Shiraz, the "seat of learning," to put to writing
the thoughts which his sympathetic and observing mind had been evolving
during all these years. This time of his mastership was spent in the
seclusion almost of a recluse and in producing the twenty-two works
which have come down to us. An Oriental writer says of these periods of
his life: "The first thirty years of Sa'di's long life were devoted to
study and laying up a stock of knowledge; the next thirty, or perhaps
forty, in treasuring up experience and disseminating that knowledge
during his wide extending travels; and that some portion should
intervene between the business of life and the hour of death (and that