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, muc