friendly smile, "I am delighted to see you thoughtful of your
future. I have often scolded your mother about you; you are tall and
sensible for your age, are almost a young man, and it would become
you to be taking care of yourself. But both your mother and your
Uncle Toussoun are spoiling you in their anxiety to strew your
pathway with rose-leaves, and guard you from every hardship."

"They would," said the boy, shrugging his shoulders, "if I allowed
them, but I will not! I will bare my face to the storm, and walk on
thorns instead of rose-leaves, in order that my feet may become
hardened. Therefore, tell me, dear sir, what I am to do to provide
for my future."

"That is hard to tell," replied Lion, with a sigh. "For every thing
a certain something is necessary, which you, unfortunately, do not
possess."

"And what is this something? " asked the boy, hastily

"Money," replied the merchant. "It is not enough to pray to Allah,
and to receive into one's soul the precepts of the Koran; one must
also use one's hands industriously, and learn the precepts of
worldly wisdom, and the very first of these is, 'Have money, and you
can obtain all else.'"

"I will have money, that I may obtain all else!" exclaimed Mohammed;
"only tell me how to procure it."

"That is just where the difficulty lies, you foolish boy," said the
merchant, stroking his brown hair gently. "Those who rob and plunder