In the capacity of a merchant the simpleton does very wonderful things, and plumes himself on his sagacity, as we have already seen in the case of the Arab and his cow.  And here are a brace of similar stories:  A foolish man once went to the island of Kataha to trade, and among his wares was a quantity of fragrant aloes-wood.  After he had sold his other goods, he could not find any one to take the aloes-wood off his hands, for the people who live there are not acquainted with that article of commerce.  Then seeing people buying charcoal from the woodmen, he burnt his stock of aloes-wood and reduced it to charcoal.  He sold it for the price which charcoal usually fetched, and returning home, boasted of his cleverness, and became the laughing-stock of everybody.—­Another blockhead went to the market to sell cotton, but no one would buy it from him, because it was not properly cleaned.  In the meanwhile he saw in the bazaar a goldsmith selling gold which he had purified by heating it, and he saw it taken by a customer.  Seeing that, he threw his cotton into the fire in order to purify it, and it was all burned to ashes.

There must be few who have not heard of the Irishman who was hired by a Yarmouth maltster to help in loading a ship.  As the vessel was about to sail, the Irishman cried out from the quay, “Captain, I lost your shovel overboard, but I cut a big notch on the rail-fence, round the stern, just where it went down, so you will find it when you come back.”—­A similar story is told of an Indian simpleton.  He was sailing in a ship when he let a silver cup fall from his hand into the water.  Having taken notes of the spot by observing the eddies and other signs in the water, he said to himself, “I will bring it up from the bottom when I return.”  As he was recrossing the sea, he saw the eddies and other signs, and thinking he recognised the spot, he plunged into the water again and again, to recover his cup, but he only got well laughed at for his pains.

We have an amusing commentary on the maxim that “distress is sure to come from being in the company of fools” in the following, from the Canarese story-book entitled Kathe Manjari:  A foolish fellow travelled with a shopkeeper.  When it became dark, the fool lay down in the road to sleep, but the shopkeeper took shelter in a hollow tree.  Presently some thieves came along the road, and one struck his feet against the fool’s legs, upon which he exclaimed to his companions, “What is this?  Is it a piece of wood?” The fool was angry, and said, “Go away! go away!  Is there a knot, well tied, containing five annas, in the loins of a plank in your house?” The thieves then seized him, and took away his annas.  As they were moving off, they asked if the money was good or bad, to which the noodle replied, “Ha! ha! is it of my money you speak in that way, and want to know whether it is good or bad?  Look—­ there is a shopkeeper in that tree,” pointing with his finger—­“show it to him.”  Then the thieves went up to the shopkeeper and robbed him of two hundred pagodas.