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,