Nihad, Tata's darling: after the middle of this night you will bid farewell to another year of your life, and in the morning you will look out upon the world of youth — a world whose attainment you no doubt long for, with all its enticements and bewitching allurements..!
If I were in your place, Nihad — after my long experience of life — I would not hasten the close of this stage you are now in before I had made full provision for reaching the stage of youth — that stage in which alluring play and amusement stand side by side with the earnestness and activity that will collide at every one of life's turnings....
You are no doubt aware that the vigor of youth has always been, and still is, attractive and alluring, and that youth is the hope of the world and the goal of its gaze; but at the same time we must not let slip from our minds what accompanies it: the ways of
amusement and frivolity, and the bodily and material pleasures that hurl down the greater number of today's young men and blind their eyes to such a degree — deluding them into believing that they, and they alone, are the masters of their souls and their destiny, and that they hold, in their own hands, the right to toy with all the resources of life, the lean of them and the fat, without any restraint or watcher — and they reckon that the world, and all that is in it and upon it, lies beneath their feet. And thus — as is happening today — all the temptations, and how perilous they are, conspire to wrench the young man from his wholesome surroundings, and from the wholesome inclinations lying deep within him, down into the pits of seduction and corruption!!!
Nihad! I beg you, by God, Tata's dear, give ear to this plea that I bring to you, carrying with it all that I possess of a mother's feeling: that you study these lines of mine with care and deliberation, not once but several times, before the curtain rises on your seventeenth year, and whenever you find yourself alone and sense the first signs of weakness within you.
Beware of making light of my plea, for I have placed within it my intense love for you, and for your mother, and for your father, together with a boundless hope, which accompanies my final hours, that you, Nihad, may be the apple of her eye and the emblem of her pride in all your ways.
No! I do not covet for you a wrestling with destiny in matters where your mental gifts have not aided you, but rather on the moral side; for there, without doubt — if you so will — you shall shine; and I sensed your readiness for victory of this kind in our last conversation — do you remember??
Never in my life have I seen you as I saw you in our last hour alone together: you were overflowing with ambition, vitality, and happiness as you recounted to me the esteem your teachers and comrades hold for you! Is not this success of character and conduct more precious than all the treasures of the earth!!
Nothing remains for you, then, but to review your bodily, mental, and spiritual states from time to time, and to introduce into them the adjustments that will enable you to march toward your goal and that accord with the nature of the aim to which you aspire.
And finally, you must be certain, and keep ever before your eyes, that this aim can be achieved only if you prepare yourself for it by organizing your time — your hours of study, your hours of rest, and of sleep — in such order as will enable you to follow the road that leads to an eminent and respected place among your people.
And you will arrive, God willing, at what you desire, and what we desire for you, my darling.
Tata