ry pleasure and diversion which wealth
could purchase. All who were the companions of my childhood, all who
would court an inexperienced heart, were admitted to my table; and the
strict laws of Mahomet were less regarded at my house than the rich
wines which sparkled at my feasts. Nor were the charms of the fair
forgotten; and while our goblets were filled with wine, we envied not
the deceased their rivers of milk.

Thus passed I my life among those who jest with religion, and make
their mock at the rules of prudence and sobriety. But the time soon
came when my hours of revelry were to be changed for those of sorrow,
and when I was first to learn that a father's prudence will not secure
a wicked son from the shafts of bitterness and grief.

My possessions, though ample, were nearly exhausted by ignorance and
extortion; my jewels were gone; unacquainted with their value, I had
flung them away rather than sold them; my silver and gold were become
the property of my friends, who, when I applied to them in return,
were much more assiduous, if possible, in keeping it from me than I
had been in squandering it on them. So that, in a little while, even
the merchants, who had been such gainers by me, came to demand some
trifling sums that I had borrowed from them, which being unable to
pay, they seized my furniture and stripped me of my clothes to satisfy
their demands.

In this situation I was turned out of my own doors by those whom I had
received a thousand times in my arms, and spurned at like a dog by
those whom I had pressed to my bosom.

Stung by reflecting on my former follies, and ignorant where to fly
for shelter, I covered myself with some few rags that had been cast to
me, and sat down before the house of a rich young man, who, like
myself, seemed to be squandering his wealth on the scum of the earth.

Bennaskar--for that was his name--soon came forth, with his minstrels
and singers at his heels, and, seeing a miserable figure before his
door, he asked what I wanted. I told him that once, like himself, I
gave life to the dance and mirth to my friends; but that want of
caution had been the cause of my ruin, and too much confidence in
those who least deserved my favour.

Several of his friends, hearing this, would have driven me from his
presence, saying it was unfit such a wretch should even enjoy the
blessings of the air; but Bennaskar would not suffer it, and asked me,
"Whether the insincerity of my friends h