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ABOU BEN ADHEM was approached one day by
a young man who asked him as to the best
method of using up an inheritance he had just fallen
into. Abou looked at the young man; he diagnosed
the case, as it were, and went for him thus: —

“Young man, I will tell you a story of Persian
life. Listen.

“Koab, the son of Beslud, the leather merchant,
was a young man of twenty when his paternal progenitor
was promoted to be an angel and assumed
wings. Koab did not weep at his father's demise,
for the old gentleman had accumulated his lucre with
great care and by great labor, and, consequently,
was very, very close with it. He had been a singular
old man. He never knew the taste of champagne,
and always smoked a pipe, — excellent preparation
for death, methinks. With such tastes, what was
there for him to live for? What was there in death
for him to fear?

“But he left young Koab a fortune of an even

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hundred thousand dirhems, which the young man lost
no time in transferring to his own keeping.

“Immediately Koab's relatives gathered about him
to advise him as to what to do with it.

“One said, `Go into the grocery business and become
a merchant prince.' Another strongly insisted
that his best hold was to go into railroads with his
capital, and be a Van-der-Built. Another advised,
with tears in his eyes, that he go into dry goods and
be a Stoo-art or a Klaa-flynn. Another was divided
in opinion as to whether he ought to start a daily
paper or run a theatre; but Koab dismissed him
with a frown. `He hates me, and would ruin me
quickly,' quoth the sagacious young man.

“`I shall do nothing of the sort,' said he. `I shall
adopt none of your suggestions.'

“`You will be ruined if you do not!' shouted they
all in a chorus.

“`As not one of you has succeeded in making a
fortune,' retorted Koab, `it strikes me that you are
fearfully competent to advise me. But I have marked
out my path in life.'

“`What is it?'

“`I shall, firstly, get rid of all my poor relations.

“The relatives all discharged themselves of groans.

“`Then I shall invest what the old m— that is, my
poor father, left me, in safe securities bearing ten per
cent.'

“`Good! that will give you ten thousand dirhems
per year.'

“`True, but I shall not live on ten thousand per

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year. I shall live on about twenty thousand a year.
I shall have horses, an interest in a yacht, shall join
all the clubs, shall never drink water when wine is
attainable; in short, I shall go for pleasure in every
possible way that pleasure is to be had.'

“`But you will run through your fortune while
you are still young.'

“`That is the time to run it through, while I am
young enough to enjoy it. What, O idiots! is the
good of a fine dinner to a man whose stomach is worn
out and who is too much used up to eat it? Wherefore
wine to him whose stomach can't abide wine? Wherefore
anything to a man who can't take anything? I
would prefer it, had I income enough, to live just as
I desire without infringing upon my capital; but as
I cannot, I propose to live my life anyhow. Fate
has been cruel to me in not giving me two hundred
thousand dirhems. I shall never feel pleasant towards
my deceased father that he did not labor harder and
live more savingly. He has used me badly. But I
am a philosopher. Koab proposes now to drain the
cup of pleasure to its dregs.'

“Koab went in, in the language of the prize ring,
in a very spirited style. He kept a fast horse, he
drank wine, he gambled a little; and if his feminine
friends had been virtuous in proportion to the amount
of money he spent on them, Cæsar's wife would
have been a drab in comparison with them. But
they were not. On the contrary, quite the reverse.

“He had a severe fit of sickness, which nursed his

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estate a little; but he managed by hard work to get
through with the most of it in about ten years.

“`Your money must be nearly all gone,' said his
friends to him one day.

“`I have about a thousand dirhems left,' said he.

“`Horrible!' said they.

“`Beautiful!' said he. `My stomach is also almost
gone. How lovely it is to have your money hold out
as long as your stomach! Had one given out before
the other, — I shudder at the thought. To have an
appetite and no money, or to have no appetite and
cords of money, — I know not which is the worst.
But with me it is splendid. Things run in grooves,
as it were. A few more dinners, a few more nights,
and my stomach will be gone, and my money with it.
But I have had a good time of it.'

“`What will you do then?'

“`Impious wretch, do you read Holy Writings?
“Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” In my
case, I can testify to the truth of that passage every
day. Then again, “Take no thought of the morrow.'”

“As he anticipated, in a few weeks Koab had not
a dirhem, not a kopeck left. He lived a few days
on credit, and then spent several days considering
whether suicide by poison or drowning was the more
pleasant. After giving the subject mature consideration,
he concluded that he would not die at all, and
accepted a situation as a porter in a wholesale grocery
store, whose proprietor had known his father.

“He was rolling barrels one day, when his friends
came in.

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“`Ha!' said they. `You see, now, we were right:
you are brought down to manual labor at thirty.'

“`Precisely what my physician would have prescribed
for a wasted constitution like mine,' said he,
cheerfully. `I am gaining flesh under it.'

“They came in again, and saw him eating brown
bread.

“`Ha!' they remarked. `You are brought down
to plain food. We told you so.'

“`My friends,' said he, impressively, `were I the
possessor of millions, I should, after ten years of
dissipation, be compelled to eat plain food or die.
O ye imbeciles! can't you see that this is natural?
What difference does it make whether I eat brown
bread by the advice of a physician, or eat it because
I can't get any other? What difference does it make
whether I exercise my overtaxed body in a gymnasium,
where I pay for the privilege, or exercise it by
rolling barrels, for which I get paid? “Exercise
and plain food,” said my doctor long ago, “is what
you must have.” I am getting both, ye sodden-brained
Job's comforters.'

“And Koab worked on, and got his health, and
finally got into business, and made money, and had
another fortune to spend; and he spent it.

“This, my young friend, is all of the story of Koab,
the Persian, that I shall tell you. There is a moral
to it which probably you don't see. But I have a
comfortable way of fixing people who do not see the
moral to the things I say. I simply say it is because
they lack the necessary intellect.

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“Far be it from me to advise young men to squander
their fortunes in riotous living, as did Koab.
Koab's idea was not wholly correct. He erred.

“But he erred no more than do those who go to
the other extreme; in fact, he erred less.

“The people who grub through their entire youth,
enjoying nothing, with the idea that they will live to
enjoy at some remote period, err a great deal more,
for the reason that they never enjoy at all. Grubbing
unfits them for enjoying, and therefore their
labor is to no purpose. Kunla, the Persian poet,
who wrote `Go it while you 're young,' was not
wholly wrong; for youth has the faculty to enjoy
and the power to enjoy. The blood courses freely;
there is strength, elasticity, and joyousness. But
alas! there comes a time when we cannot enjoy if
we would. The man of sixty, sans teeth, sans gastric
juice, sans stomach, thin-blooded, cold, and cynical,
can enjoy but little at best; and if he has grubbed in
his youth, ten to one but he has acquired a habit of
grubbing which lasts him through his old age, and
his life may be said to be as much of a failure as the
other.

“If Koab had been a moral person, and had enjoyed
himself in a rational way, within his income,
and had done some business for the sake of others,
I should mark on his tombstone `Approved.' He
should have had his yacht; he should have eaten
good dinners; he should have had the fleet horses of
Arabia; and he should have had pictures and all else
that pleases the senses. But he should have avoided

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excesses and immoralities; he should have used some
of his money in relieving the necessities of the unfortunate
children of the Prophet; in short, he should
have paid the debt which we all owe to humanity.

“But as between Koab and the man who uses his
inheritance only to double it, who lives a life only to
gather dross without putting it to any use whatever,
I give my voice to Koab as the most sensible.

“My son, some day when I have time I will write
you a history of my life, which you shall read, and
which will be a lamp to your feet, and a sure guide.

“But leave me now, for I fain would rest.
Away!”

And Abou went in to count over the profits of a
speculation he had been in; and he wrought at it
late in the night.

“Why do you so labor for lucre?” said I to him.
“Do you follow the lesson you gave the young man,
O Sage?”

“What says Hafiz?” was his reply: “Chin-music
is cheaper even than that of the hand-organ.' Doth
advice cost? Go to!”

p632-138

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