But the Chinese relate the very counterpart of our Irishman’s story.  A confirmed drunkard dreamt that he had been presented with a cup of excellent wine, and set it by the fire to warm[4], that he should better enjoy the flavour of it; but just as he was about to drink off the delicious draught he awoke.  “Fool that I am,” he cried, “why was I not content to drink it cold?"[5]

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The Chinese seem to have as keen a sense of humour as any other people.  They tell a story, for instance, of a lady who had been recently married, and on the third day saw her husband returning home, so she slipped quietly behind him and gave him a hearty kiss.  The husband was annoyed, and said she offended all propriety.  “Pardon! pardon!” said she.  “I did not know it was you.”  Thus the excuse may sometimes be worse than the offence.  There is exquisite humour in the following noodle-story:  Two brothers were tilling the ground together.  The elder, having prepared dinner, called his brother, who replied in a loud voice, “Wait till I have hidden my spade, and I shall at once be with you.”  When he joined his elder brother, the latter mildly reproached him, saying, “When one hides anything, one should keep silence, or at least should not cry aloud about it, for it lays one open to be robbed.”  Dinner over, the younger went back to the field, and looked for his spade, but could not find it; so he ran to his brother and whispered mysteriously in his ear, “My spade is stolen!”—­The passion for collecting antique relics is thus ridiculed:  A man who was fond of old curiosities, though he knew not the true from the false, expended all his wealth in purchasing mere imitations of the lightning-stick of Tchew-Koung, a glazed cup of the time of the Emperor Cheun, and the mat of Confucius; and being reduced to beggary, he carried these spurious relics about with him, and said to the people in the streets, “Sirs, I pray you, give me some coins struck by Tai-Koung.”

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Indian fiction abounds in stories of simpletons, and probably the oldest extant drolleries of the Gothamite type are found in the Jatakas, or Buddhist Birth-stories.  Assuredly they were own brothers to our mad men of Gotham, the Indian villagers who, being pestered by mosquitoes when at work in the forest, bravely resolved, according to Jataka 44, to take their bows and arrows and other weapons and make war upon the troublesome insects until they had shot dead or cut in pieces every one; but in trying to shoot the mosquitoes they only shot, struck, and injured one another.  And nothing more foolish is recorded of the Schildburgers than Somadeva relates, in his Katha Sarit Sagara, of the simpletons who cut down the palm-trees:  Being required to furnish the king with a certain quantity of dates, and perceiving that it was very easy to gather the dates of a palm which had fallen down of itself, they set to work and cut down all the date-palms in their village, and having gathered from them their whole crop of dates, they raised them up and planted them again, thinking they would grow.