he intreated us not to press him.  “I will take good care,” said he, “how I touch any dish that is seasoned with garlic; I have not yet forgotten what the tasting of such a dish once cost me.”  We requested him to inform us what the reason was of his aversion to garlic.  But before he had time to answer, the master of the house exclaimed, “Is it thus you honour my table?  This dish is excellent, do not expect to be excused from eating of it; you must do me that favour as well as the rest.”  “Sir,” said the gentleman, who was a Bagdad merchant, “I hope you do not think my refusal proceeds from any mistaken delicacy; if you insist on my compliance I will submit, but it must be on this condition, that after having eaten, I may, with your permission, wash my hands with alkali forty times, forty times more with ashes, and forty times again with soap.  I hope you will not feel displeased at this stipulation, as I have made an oath never to taste garlic but on these terms.”

As the master of the house, continued the purveyor of the sultan of Casgar, would not dispense with the merchant’s partaking of the dish seasoned with garlic, he ordered his servants to provide a basin of water, together with some alkali, the ashes, and soap, that the merchant might wash as often as he pleased.  After he had given these instructions, he addressed the merchant and said, “I hope you will now do as we do.”

The merchant, apparently displeased with the constraint put upon him, took up a bit, which he put to his mouth trembling, and ate with a reluctance that astonished us.  But what surprised us yet more was, that he had no thumb; which none of us had observed before, though he had eaten of other dishes.  “You have lost your thumb,” said the master of the house.  “This must have been occasioned by some extraordinary accident, a relation of which will be agreeable to the company.”  “Sir,” replied the merchant, “I have no thumb on either the right or the left hand.”  As he spoke he put out his left hand, and shewed us that what he said was true.  “But this is not all,” continued he:  “I have no great toe on either of my feet:  I was maimed in this manner by an unheard-of adventure, which I am willing to relate, if you will have the patience to hear me.  The account will excite at once your astonishment and your pity.  Only allow me first to wash my hands.”  With this he rose from the table, and after washing his hands a hundred and twenty times, reseated himself, and proceeded with his narrative as follows.

In the reign of the caliph Haroon al Rusheed, my father lived at Bagdad, the place of my nativity, and was reputed one of the richest merchants in the city.  But being a man addicted to his pleasures, and neglecting his private affairs, instead of leaving me an ample fortune, he died in such embarrassed circumstances, that I was reduced to the necessity of using all the economy possible to discharge the debts he had contracted.  I at last, however, paid them all; and by care and good management my little fortune began to wear a smiling aspect.