Ernest Young

“ The evil one came to him again, and whispered to him of love and power, of wealth and honour, and urged him to seek his home, his wife, and his child. For forty-nine days and nights Gautama sat under the Bo-tree, his mind torn with the conflict as to what was his duty. At the end of that time his doubts vanished, his mind cleared, the storm was over, and he had become the "Buddha"—that is, the "Enlightened One." He knew now that it was his duty to go and preach to people the way to happiness and peace, to show them how to avoid misery, and how to conquer even death itself. ”

“ Another day he saw a man suffering from disease, and again the charioteer explained that all men have to suffer pain. A few days later he saw a dead body, and learned for the first time—a fact that had been kept from him through all the days of his childhood and his manhood even up to that hour—that all human beings must die.
Gautama was very sad when he thought of the misery that there is in the world, and he began to wonder if it could not all be done away with. He made up his mind to go away secretly and become a hermit. ”

“ It must be remembered that the Buddha was a man who did actually live upon the earth, and that, though the fables about him are unbelievable by us, yet these fables are useful as showing us what other people thought about their wise and saintly teacher.
About five hundred years before the birth of Christ the Buddha was born at a small village in India, only a few days' journey from Benares, the sacred city of the Hindus. His father was the Rajah of the tribe of Sakyas. The boy's family name was Gautama, and under this name we shall oftenest speak of him in this chapter. ”