e;" "Out of a hawk's nest comes a
hawk;" "A fat ox and a rotten shroud are good for nothing;" "There are
seven tastes as to a man's dress, but only one as to his stature" (_i.e.,_
his own); "A good head will find itself a hat;" "At the attack of the wolf
the ass shuts his eyes;" "If you are sweet to others, they will swallow
you--if bitter, they will spit you out;" "Go where you will, lift up any
stone and you will find a Lak under it;" "He is like a hen that wants to
lay an egg, and can't;" "He who is sated cannot understand the hungry;" "A
barking dog soon grows old;" "A quiet cat eats a big lump of fat;" "If
water bars your road, be a fish--if cliffs, a mountain-goat."

Closely allied to Caucasian proverbs in spirit and in rough, grotesque
humor are Caucasian anecdotes, of which I have space for only a few
characteristic specimens. They are almost invariably short, terse and
pithy, and would prove, even in the absence of all other evidence, that
these fierce, stern, unyielding mountaineers have the keenest possible
appreciation of humor, and that in the quick perception and hearty
enjoyment of pure absurdity they come nearer to Americans than do perhaps
any of the West European races. One of the following anecdotes, "The Big
Turnip," I have seen in American newspapers within a year, and all of them
bear a greater or less resemblance, both in spirit and form, to American
stories. I will begin with an anecdote of the mullah Nazr-Eddin, a
mythical, or at any rate an historically unknown, individual, whose
personality the mountaineers use as a sort of peg upon which to hang all
the floating jokes and absurd stories which they from time to time hear or
invent, just as Americans use the traditional Irishman to give a modern
stamp to a joke which perhaps is as old as the Pyramids. The mountaineers
originally borrowed this lay figure of Nazr-Eddin from the Turks, but they
have clothed it in an entirely new suit of blunders, witticisms and
absurdities of their own manufacture.

_Nazr-Eddin's Greetings._--Nazr-Eddin once upon a time, while travelling,
came upon some people digging a grave. "May peace be with you!" said he as
he stopped before them, "and may the blessing of God be upon your labor!"
The gravediggers, enraged, seized shovels and picks and fell upon
Nazr-Eddin and began to beat him. "What have I done to you?" he asked in
affright: "what do you beat me for?"--"When you saw us," replied the
gravediggers, "you should