“But by the time these dreadful things were taking place I was safe here in Baghdad—it was about the time the eldest of you was born. I purchased this site, built the palace where you do me the honour of attending me (and also that of Dar-al-Beida for my wife, your dear aunt, four days away) and have now lived serenely into old age, praising and blessing God.
“My dear nephews, I have no more to tell. You have now heard how industry in itself is nothing if it is not guided and sustained by Providence, but you have doubtless also perceived that the best fortune which Heaven” (here the old man bowed his head reverently) “can bestow upon a mortal is useless indeed unless he supplement its grace by his own energy and self-discipline. I must warn you in closing that any efforts of your own to tread in the path I have described would very probably end in your suffering upon the market place of the city that ignominious death which furnishes in the public executions such entertainment to the vulgar. If, indeed, you can pass the first stages of your career without suffering anything more fatal than the bastinado you might reach at last some such great position as I occupy. Indeed,” mused the kindly old man, “Hareb, my junior partner, and Muktahr, whom you have heard called ‘The Camel King,’ have each been bastinadoed most severely in the past, when their operations were upon a smaller scale. … But we are content to forget such things.
“I have no more to tell you. Work as hard as you possibly can, live soberly and most minutely by rule, and so long as any dregs of strength remain to you struggle to retain some small part of the product of your labour for the support of yourselves and your families. The rest will, in the natural course of things, find its way into the hands of men like myself. … And now depart with my benediction. But, stay,” he said, as though a thought had struck him, “I cannot let you go without a little present for each.”
So saying, the kindly old man went to a cup board of beautiful inlaid work, and drawing from it seven dried figs in the last stages of aridity and emaciation, he presented one to each of his nephews, who received the gift with transports of gratitude and affection.
Just as they were about to take their leave the youngest boy (a child, it will be remembered, of but tender years), approached his uncle with a beautiful mixture of humility and love, and bringing out a paper which he had secreted in the folds of his tunic, begged the merchant to sign his name in it and date it too, as a souvenir of these delightful mornings.
“With all my heart, my little fellow,” said Mahmoud, patting him upon the head and reflecting that such good deeds cost nothing and are their own regard.
This done, the boys departed.
Next morning, on Mahmoud sending a slave to his cashier for the sum required to pay a band of Kurdish Torturers whom he desired to hire for his debtors’ prison, he was annoyed to receive the reply that there was no cash immediately available, a large draft signed by him having been presented that very morning and duly honoured. As the sum was considerable, and as the payment had been made but a few moments before, the cashier begged his master to wait for half an hour or so until more metal could be procured from a neighbouring deposit.
It was in vain that Mahmoud searched his memory for the signature of any such instrument. He was puzzled and suspected a forgery. At last he determined that the paper should be sent for and put before him. There, sure enough was his signature; but the sum of 20,000 dinars therein mentioned was in another and most childish hand. Then did it suddenly break upon the great captain of industry that the tiny child, his youngest nephew, who had asked for his autograph as a souvenir, was not wholly unworthy of the blood which he had collaterally inherited. … He wrote to the boy’s father and secured the little fellow’s services as office-boy at nothing-a-week. He watched his developing talent, and was not disappointed. Long before the lad was full grown he had got every clerk of the great business house into his debt and had successfully transferred to his own secret hiding-place the savings of the porter, the carrier and the aged widow who cleaned the place of a morning. By his seventeenth year he had brought off a deal in fugitive slaves, taking equal amounts from the culprits for hiding and from the masters for betraying them. By his eighteenth he had control of a public bath where clients were watched by spies and thus furnished a source of ample revenue. Before he was of age he had astonished and delighted his now more than octogenarian uncle by selling him, under a false name and through a man of straw, a ship due to arrive at Bosra, but, as a fact, sunk off Bushire five days before.
In every way he showed himself worthy of his uncle’s confirmed reliance on his commercial prowess. When the
