e 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 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 w