Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 400 pages of information about Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers.

Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 400 pages of information about Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers.
awoke and saw that his ferage had been stolen, he told his officers to bring before him whomsoever they found wearing it.  The officers, seeing the ferage on the Khoja, seized and brought him before the governor, who said to him:  “Ho!  Khoja, where did you obtain that ferage?” The Khoja responded “As I was taking a walk with my friend Ahmed we saw a fellow lying drunk, whereupon I took off his ferage and went away with it.  If it be yours, pray take it.”  “O no,” said the governor, “it does not belong to me.”

Even being robbed could not disturb the Khoja’s good humour.  When he was lying in bed one night a loud noise was heard in the street before his house.  Said he to his wife:  “Get up and light a candle, and I will go and see what is the matter.”  “You had much better stay where you are,” advised his wife.  But the Khoja, without heeding her words, put the counterpane on his shoulders and went out.  A fellow, on perceiving him, immediately snatched the counterpane from off the Khoja’s shoulders and ran away.  Shivering with cold, the Khoja returned into the house, and when his wife asked him the cause of the noise, he said:  “It was on account of our counterpane; when they got that, the noise ceased at once.”

But in the following story we have a very old acquaintance in a new dress:  One day the Khoja’s wife, in order to plague him, served up some exceedingly hot broth, and, forgetting what she had done, put a spoonful of it in her mouth, which so scalded her that the tears came into her eyes.  “O wife,” said the Khoja, “what is the matter with you—­is the broth hot?” “Dear Efendi,” said she, “my mother, who is now dead, loved broth very much; I thought of that, and wept on her account.”  The Khoja, thinking that what she said was truth, took a spoonful of the broth, and, it burning his mouth, he began to bellow.  “What is the matter with you?” said his wife.  “Why do you cry?” Quoth the Khoja:  “You cry because your mother is gone, but I cry because her daughter is here."[27]

   [27] This is how the same story is told in our oldest English
        jest-book, entitled A Hundred Mery Talys (1525):  A
        certain merchant and a courtier being upon a time at
        dinner, having a hot custard, the courtier, being
        somewhat homely of manner, took part of it and put it in
        his mouth, which was so hot that it made him shed tears. 
        The merchant, looking on him, thought that he had been
        weeping, and asked him why he wept.  This courtier, not
        willing it to be known that he had brent his mouth with
        the hot custard, answered and said, “Sir,” quod he, “I
        had a brother which did a certain offence, wherefore he
        was hanged.”  The merchant thought the courtier had said
        true, and anon, after the merchant was disposed to eat
        of the custard, and put a spoonful of it into his mouth,

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Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.