f the whip
out of fine copper wire of a fantastically ornate pattern nicely
studded with leaden stars.

"How will you prove that it is a good whip?" asked the merchant.

"Stop till my children come home."

"Your _children_?"

"Yes, naturally. I should not think of proving it on other people's
children."

"You are surely not going to prove the whip on your own?"

"On whom else, then? Children should be whipped in order that they may
be good, that they may be kept in order, and that they may not get
nonsense into their heads. 'Tis also a good thing to train them
betimes to endure greater sorrow by giving them a foretaste of lesser
ones, so that when they grow up to man's estate, and real misfortune
overtakes them, they may be able to bear it. My father used always to
beat me, and now I bless him for it, for it made a man of me. Children
are always full of evil dispositions, and you do well to drive such
things out of them with the whip."

A peculiar smile passed across the long, olive-colored face of the
Greek at these words; he seemed to be only smiling to himself. Then he
fixed his sly, coal-black eyes on the sheik, and inquired,
sceptically:

"But surely you don't beat your children without cause?"

"Oh, there's always cause. Children are always doing something wrong;
you have only to keep an eye on them to see that, and whoever neglects
to punish them acts like him who should forbear to pull up the weeds
in his garden."

"Kasi Mollah," said the Greek, puffing two long clouds of smoke
through his nostrils, "I tell you, children are not your speciality,
for you do not understand how to bring them up. In the whole land of
Circassia there is none who knows how to bring up children."

"Then how comes it that our girls are the fairest and our youths the
bravest on the face of the earth?"

"Your girls would be still more beautiful and your lads still more
valiant if you brought them up in the land where dwell the descendants
of white-bosomed Briseis and quick-footed Achilles. O Hellas!"

The Greek began to grow rapturous at the pronunciation of these
classical names, and in his excitement blew sufficient smoke out of
his chibook to have clouded all Olympus.

"I tell you. Kasi Mollah," continued he, "that children are the gifts
of God, and he who beats a child lifts his whip, so to speak, against
God Himself, for His hands defend their little bodies. You do but sin
against your children. Give them to me!"