[26] The Khoja was contemporary with the renowned conqueror
        of nations, Timur, or Timurleng, or, as the name is
        usually written in this country, Tamarlane, though there
        does not appear to be any authority that he was the
        official jester at the court of that monarch, as some
        writers have asserted.  The pleasantries ascribed to the
        Khoja—­the title now generally signifies Teacher, or
        School-master, but formerly it was somewhat equivalent
        to our “Mr,” or, more familiarly, “Goodman”—­have been
        completely translated into French.  Of course, a large
        proportion of the jests have been taken from Arabian and
        Persian collections, though some are doubtless genuine;
        and they represent the Khoja as a curious compound of
        shrewdness and simplicity.  A number of the foolish
        sayings and doings fathered on him are given in my Book
        of Noodles, 1888.

To return to the Turkish jest-book.  One day the Khoja borrowed a cauldron from a brazier, and returned it with a little saucepan inside.  The owner, seeing the saucepan, asked:  “What is this?” Quoth the Khoja:  “Why, the cauldron has had a young one”; whereupon the brazier, well pleased, took possession of the saucepan.  Some time after this the Khoja again borrowed the cauldron and took it home.  At the end of a week the brazier called at the Khoja’s house and asked for his cauldron.  “O set your mind at rest,” said the Khoja; “the cauldron is dead.”  “O Khoja,” quoth the brazier, “can a cauldron die?” Responded the Khoja:  “Since you believed it could have a young one, why should you not also believe that it could die?”

The Khoja had a pleasant way of treating beggars.  One day a man knocked at his door.  “What do you want?” cried the Khoja from above.  “Come down,” said the man.  The Khoja accordingly came down, and again said:  “What do you want?” “I want charity,” said the man.  “Come up stairs,” said the Khoja.  When the beggar had come up, the Khoja said:  “God help you”—­the customary reply to a beggar when one will not or cannot give him anything.  “O master,” cried the man, “why did you not say so below?” Quoth the Khoja:  “When I was above stairs, why did you bring me down?”

Drunkenness is punished (or punishable) by the infliction of eighty strokes of the bastinado in Muslim countries, but it is only flagrant cases that are thus treated, and there is said to be not a little private drinking of spirits as well as of wine among the higher classes, especially Turks and Persians.  It happened that the governor of Suricastle lay in a state of profound intoxication in a garden one day, and was thus discovered by the Khoja, who was taking a walk in the same garden with his friend Ahmed.  The Khoja instantly stripped him of his ferage, or upper garment, and, putting it on his own back, walked away.  When the governor