profoundly grateful, and I am aware, too, that I have cause to be.
Only consider, that to you and your father I owe all that I know.
Have I not been allowed to share the instruction given you? Has not
the scha-er, whom your father, as his narratives pleased us so much,
kept here at a heavy expense, instructed me, too, and taught us both
the history of our own and of all other countries? Have I not had
the same opportunities as yourself of learning of all that is going
on out in the world? Did I not share your instruction in all other
branches? Have not the poems of our land been read to us, and have
we not learned to understand the Koran, and receive into our souls
the wise teachings of the prophet Mahommed? Have we not also learned
the difficult science of algebra, and are we not familiar with the
laws of justice? Do I not owe it entirely to the instruction which I
have shared with you that I can also read the Koran and the books of
the prophets and poets? Ah, Osman, I still remember with shame how I
was sorrowfully compelled to confess to our teacher in our first
lessons, that I knew and understood nothing; that I could not read,
and did not even know the letters and figures."

"And how rapidly you learned all this!" said Osman. "It surprised
everybody, and I assure you the scha-rer is always charmed when he
speaks of you, and he listens admiringly to what you say after the
lessons are over. Yes, the scha-rer says, if you only would you
could become one of the greatest of scholars, so rapid has been your
progress; but-"

"But one thing I have not learned", said Mohammed, interrupting him
with a smile". You were about to begin the old story, were you not,
Osman? 'But you never would learn to write,' you were about to say."