The powder, it is true, was accidentally found by me in our china vases; but there it might have remained to this instant, useless, if I had not taken the pains to make it useful.

I grant that we can only partially foresee and command events; yet on the use we make of our own powers, I think, depends our destiny.

But, gentlemen, you would rather hear my adventures, perhaps, than my reflections; and I am truly concerned, for your sakes, that I have no wonderful events to relate.

I am sorry I cannot tell you of my having been lost in a sandy desert.

I have never had the plague, nor even been shipwrecked: I have been all my life an inhabitant of Constantinople, and have passed my time in a very quiet and uniform manner.
"The money I received from the sultan's favourite for my china vase, as my brother may have told you, enabled me to trade on a more extensive scale.