The lad was in great fear of being drowned, and made a loud outcry, in
spite of every effort of those around him to soothe him into
tranquility. As his lamentations annoyed the king, a sage who was of the
company offered to quiet the terrified youth, with his majesty's
permission, which being granted, he caused the boy to be plunged several
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. Saadi 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 _Akhlak-i-Jalaly_, a work comprising the practical philosophy of the
Muhammedans, written, in the 15th century, in the Persian language, by
Fakir Jani Muhammed Asaad, and translated into English by W. F. Thompson,
Ali, 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_.
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