Struck with this generous answer, the master, it is said, immediately gave him his freedom.—­A man of eminence among the Jews, observing a great crowd around Lokman, eagerly listening to his discourse, asked him whether he was not the black slave who lately tended the sheep of such a person, to which Lokman replying in the affirmative, “How was it possible,” continued his questioner, “for thee to attain so exalted a degree of wisdom and piety?” Lokman answered:  “By always speaking the truth; keeping my word; and never intermeddling in affairs that did not concern me.”—­Being asked from whom he had learned urbanity, he replied:  “From men of rude manners, for whatever I saw in them that was disagreeable I avoided doing myself.”  And when asked from whom he had acquired his philosophy, he said:  “From the blind, who never advance a step until they have tried the ground.”  Lokman is also credited with this apothegm:  “Be a learned man, a disciple of the learned, or an auditor of the learned; at least, be a lover of knowledge and desirous of improvement.”—­In Persian and Turkish tales Lokman sometimes figures as a highly skilled physician, and “wise as Lokman” is proverbial throughout the Muhammedan world.

ADDITIONAL NOTE.

DRINKING THE SEA DRY, p. 306.

The same jest is also found in Aino Folk-Tales, translated by Prof.  Basil Hall Chamberlain, and published in the Folk-Lore Journal, 1888, as follows: 

There was the Chief of the Mouth of the River and the Chief of the Upper Current of the River.  The former was very vain-glorious, and therefore wished to put the latter to shame or to kill him by engaging him in an attempt to perform something impossible.  So he sent for him and said:  “The sea is a useful thing, in so far as it is the original home of the fish which come up the river.  But it is very destructive in stormy weather, when it beats wildly upon the beach.  Do you now drink it dry, so that there may be rivers and dry land only.  If you cannot do so, then forfeit all your possessions.”  The other said, greatly to the vain-glorious man’s surprise:  “I accept the challenge.”  So, on their going down to the beach, the Chief of the Upper Current of the River took a cup and scooped up a little of the sea-water with it, drank a few drops, and said:  “In the sea-water itself there is no harm.  It is some of the rivers flowing into it that are poisonous.  Do you, therefore, first close the mouths of all the rivers both in Aino-land and in Japan, and prevent them from flowing into the sea, and then I will undertake to drink the sea dry.”  Hereupon the Chief of the Mouth of the River felt ashamed, acknowledged his error, and gave all his treasures to his rival.

* * * * *

Such an idea as this of first “stopping the rivers” might well have been conceived independently by different peoples, but surely not by such a race so low in the scale of humanity as the Ainos, who must have got the story from the Japanese, who in their turn probably derived it from some Indian-Buddhist source—­perhaps a version of the Book of Sindibad.  Of course, the several European versions and variants have been copied out of one book into another, and independent invention is out of the question.