The “harmless, necessary cat” has often to bear the blame of depredations in which she had no share—­especially the “lodging-house cat”; and, that such is the fact in Persia as well as nearer our own doors, let a story related by the celebrated poet Jami serve as evidence:  A husband gave a man of meat to his wife, bidding her cook it for his dinner.  The woman roasted it and ate it all herself, and when her husband asked for the meat she said the cat had stolen it.  The husband weighed the cat forthwith, and found that she had not increased in weight by eating so much meat; so, with a hundred perplexing thoughts, he struck his hand on his knee, and, upbraiding his wife, said:  “O lady, doubtless the cat, like the meat, weighed one man; the meat would add another man thereto.  This point is not clear to me—­that two mans should become one man.  If this is the cat, where is the meat?  And if this is the meat, why has it the form of the cat?”

Readers of our early English jest-books will perhaps remember the story of a court-jester being facetiously ordered by the king to make out a list of all the fools in his dominions, who replied that it would be a much easier task to write down a list of all the wise men.  I fancy there is some trace of this incident in the following Persian story, though the details are wholly different:  Once upon a time a party of merchants exhibited to a king some fine horses, which pleased him so well that he bought them, and gave the merchants besides a large sum of money to pay for more horses which they were to bring from their own country.  Some time after this the king, being merry with wine, said to his chief vazir:  “Make me out a list of all the blockheads in my kingdom.”  The vazir replied that he had already made out such a list, and had put his Majesty’s name at the top.  “Why so?” demanded the king.  “Because,” said the vazir, “you gave a great sum of money for horses to be brought by merchants for whom no person is surety, nor does any one know to what country they belong; and this is surely a sign of stupidity.”  “But what if they should bring the horses?” The vazir readily replied:  “If they should bring the horses, I should then erase your Majesty’s name and put the names of the merchants in its place."[30]

   [30] A similar incident is found in the 8th chapter of the
        Spanish work, El Conde Lucanor, written, in the 14th
        century, by Prince Don Juan Manuel, where a pretended
        alchemist obtains from a king a large sum of money in
        order that he should procure in his own distant country
        a certain thing necessary for the transmutation of the
        baser metals into gold.  The impostor, of course, did not
        return, and so on, much the same as in the above.—­Many
        others of Don Manuel’s tales are traceable to Eastern
        sources; he was evidently familiar with the Arabic