SEEING IT
SURPASSES THE CUNNING OF WOMEN." It happened one day that a very
beautiful young lady, who had been sent by her aunt to purchase some
rich stuffs for dresses, noticed this inscription, and at once resolved
to compel the despiser of her sex to alter it. Entering the shop, she
said to him, after the usual salutations: "You see my person; can anyone
presume to say that I am humpbacked?" He had hardly recovered from the
astonishment caused by such a question, when the lady drew her veil a
little to one side and continued: "Surely my neck is not as that of a
raven, or as the ebony idols of Ethiopia?" The young merchant, between
surprise and delight, signified his assent. "Nor is my chin double,"
said she, still farther unveiling her face; "nor my lips thick, like
those of a Tartar?" Here the young merchant smiled. "Nor are they to be
believed who say that my nose is flat and my cheeks are sunken?" The
merchant was about to express his horror at the bare idea of such
blasphemy, when the lady wholly removed her veil and allowed her beauty
to flash upon the bewildered youth, who instantly became madly in love
with her. "Fairest of creatures!" he cried, "to what accident do I owe
the view of those charms, which are hidden from the eyes of the less
fortunate of my sex?" She replied: "You see in me an unfortunate damsel,
and I shall explain the cause of my present conduct. My mother, who was
sister to a rich amir of Mecca, died some years ago, leaving my father
in possession of an immense fortune and myself as sole heiress. I am now
seventeen, my personal endowments are such as you behold, and a very
small portion of my mother's fortune would quite suffice to obtain for
me a good establishment in marriage. Yet such is the unfeeling avarice
of my father, that he absolutely refuses me the least trifle to settle
me in life. The only counsellor to whom I could apply for help in this
extremity was my kind nurse, and it is by her advice, as well as from
the high opinion I have ever heard expressed of your merits, that I have
been induced to throw myself upon your goodness in this extraordinary
manner." The emotions of the young merchant on hearing this story, may
be readily imagined. "Cruel parent!" he exclaimed. "He must be a rock of
the desert, not a man, who can condemn so charming a person to perpetual
solitude, when the slightest possible sacrifice on his part might
prevent it. May I inquire his name?" "He is the chief kazi