wn property. The Samradian
remarked: "Thou hast given me water instead of wine." "It is only
ideal," she answered; "there was no wine in existence." The husband then
said: "Thou hast spoken well; give me the cup that I may go to a
neighbour's house and bring it back full of wine." He thereupon took the
gold cup and went out and sold it, concealing the money, and, instead of
the gold vase, he brought back an earthen vessel filled with wine. The
wife, on seeing this, said: "What hast thou done with the golden cup?"
He quietly replied: "Thou art surely thinking of an ideal gold cup," on
which the lady sorely repented her witticism.[35]

[35] _The Dabistan, or School of Manners_. Translated from
the original Persian, by David Shea and Anthony Troyer.
3 vols. Published by the Oriental Translation Fund,
1843. Vol. i, 198-200. The author of this work is said
to be Moshan Fani, who flourished at Hyderabad about the
end of the 18th century.

I do not know whether there are any English parallels to these stories,
but I have read of a Greek sage who instructed his slave that all that
occurred in this world was the decree of Fate. The slave shortly after
deliberately committed some offence, upon which his master commenced to
soften his ribs with a stout cudgel, and when the slave pleaded that it
was no fault of his, it was the decree of Fate, his master grimly
replied that it was also decreed that he should have a sound beating.

* * * * *

In _Don Quixote_, it will be remembered by all readers of that
delightful work, Sancho begins to tell the knight a long story about a
man who had to ferry across a river a large flock of sheep, but he could
only take one at a time, as the boat could hold no more. This story
Cervantes, in all likelihood, borrowed from the _Disciplina Clericalis_
of Petrus Alfonsus, a converted Spanish Jew, who flourished in the 12th
century, and who avowedly derived the materials of his work from the
Arabian fabulists--probably part of them also from the Talmud.[36] His
eleventh tale is of a king who desired his minstrel to tell him a long
story that should lull him to sleep. The story-teller accordingly begins
to relate how a man had to cross a ferry with 600 sheep, two at a time,
and falls asleep in the midst of his narration. The king awakes him, but
the story-teller begs that the man be allowed to ferry over the sheep
before he resu