bragged more than he drank. The
under-current of a serious view of life runs through all he has written;
the love of the beautiful in nature--a sense of the real worth of
certain things and the worthlessness of the Ego. Resignation to what is
man's evident fate; doing well what every day brings to be done--this is
his own answer. It was Job's--it was that of Ecclesiastes.

This same "_Weltschmerz_" is ours to-day; therefore Omar Khayyam is of
us beloved. He speaks what often we do not dare to speak; one of his
quatrains can be more easily quoted than some of those thoughts can be
formulated. And then he is picturesque--picturesque because he is at
times ambiguous. Omar seems to us to have been so many things--a
believing Moslem, a pantheistic Mystic, an exact scientist (for he
reformed the Persian calendar). Such many-sidedness was possible in
Islam; but it gives him the advantage of appealing to many and different
classes of men; each class will find that he speaks their mind and their
mind only. That Omar was also tainted by Sufism there can be no doubt;
and many of his most daring flights must be regarded as the results of
the greater license which Mystic interpretation gave to its votaries.

By the side of Firdusi the epic poet, and Omar the philosopher, Sa'di
the wise man, well deserves a place. His countrymen are accustomed to
speak of him simply as "the Sheikh," much more to his real liking than
the titles "The nightingale of the groves of Shiraz," or "The
nightingale of a Thousand Songs," in which Oriental hyperbole expresses
its appreciation. Few leaders and teachers have had the good fortune to
live out their teachings in their own lives as had Sa'di. And that life
was long indeed. Muharrif al-Din Abdallah Sa'di was born at Shiraz in
1184, and far exceeded the natural span of life allotted to man--for he
lived to be one hundred and ten years of age--and much of the time was
lived in days of stress and trouble. The Mongols were devastating in the
East; the Crusaders were fighting in the West. In 1226 Sa'di himself
felt the effects of the one--he was forced to leave Shiraz and grasp the
wanderer's staff, and by the Crusaders he was taken captive and led away
to Tripoli. But just this look into the wide world, this thorough
experience of men and things, produced that serenity of being that gave
him the firm hold upon life which the true teacher must always have. Of
his own spiritual condition and contentment he