nt sufficiently of our poets to enable
me to enliven conversation with occasional apt quotations from Saadi,
Hafiz, etc.; this accomplishment, added to a good voice, made me
considered as an agreeable companion by all those whose crowns or limbs
were submitted to my operation. In short, it may, without vanity, be
asserted that Hajji Baba was quite the fashion among the men of taste
and pleasure.

My father's shop being situated near the Royal Caravanserai, the largest
and most frequented in the city, was the common resort of the foreign,
as well as of the resident, merchants; they not unfrequently gave him
something over and above the usual price, for the entertainment they
found in the repartees of his hopeful son. One of them, a Bagdad
merchant, took great fancy to me, and always insisted that I should
attend upon him, in preference even to my more experienced father. He
made me converse with him in Turkish, of which I had acquired a slight
knowledge, and so excited my curiosity by describing the beauties of the
different cities which he had visited, that I soon felt a strong desire
to travel. He was then in want of some one to keep his accounts, and
as I associated the two qualifications of barber and scribe, he made me
such advantageous offers, to enter into his service, that I agreed to
follow him; and immediately mentioned my determination to my father. My
father was very loath to lose me, and endeavoured to persuade me not to
leave a certain profession for one which was likely to be attended with
danger and vicissitudes; but when he found how advantageous were the
merchant's offers, and that it was not impossible that I might become
one myself in time, he gradually ceased to dissuade me from going; and
at length gave me his blessing, accompanied by a new case of razors.

My mother's regret for the loss of my society, and her fears for my
safety, derived no alleviation from the prospect of my expected future
aggrandizement; she augured no good from a career begun in the service
of a _Suni_;[1] but still, as a mark of her maternal affection, she
gave me a bag of broken biscuit, accompanied by a small tin case of
a precious unguent, which, she told me, would cure all fractures, and
internal complaints. She further directed me to leave the house with
my face towards the door, by way of propitiating a happy return from a
journey undertaken under such inauspicious circumstances.

[Illustration: The chaoush tells what