times in the sea and then drawn up into the ship, after which the youth
retired to a corner and remained perfectly quiet. The king inquired why
the lad had been subjected to such roughness, to which the sage replied:
"At first he had never experienced the danger of being drowned, neither
had he known the safety of a ship."

One of our English moralists has remarked that the man who chiefly
prides himself on his ancestry is like a potato-plant, whose best
qualities are under ground. Saádí tells us of an old Arab who said to
his son: "O my child, in the day of resurrection they will ask you what
you have done in the world, and not from whom you are descended."--In
the _Akhlák-i-Jalaly_, a work comprising the practical philosophy of the
Muhammedans, written, in the 15th century, in the Persian language, by
Fakír Jání Muhammed Asaád, and translated into English by W. F. Thompson,
Alí, the Prophet's cousin, is reported to have said:

My soul is my father, my title my worth;
A Persian or Arab, there's little between:
Give me him for a comrade, whatever his birth,
Who shows what _he is_--not what _others have been_.

An Arabian poet says:

Be the son of whom thou wilt, try to acquire literature,
The acquisition of which may make pedigree unnecessary to thee;
Since a man of worth is he who can say, "I am so and so,"
Not he who can only say, "My father was so and so."

And again: