th when he is himself going into it:'--One man hoards a treasure with
pain and tribulation, another comes and spends it without tribulation or
pain."

I replied: "You could have ascertained the parsimony of the wealthy only
through the medium of your own beggary; otherwise to him who lays
covetousness aside the generous man and miser seem all one. The
touchstone can prove which is pure gold, and the beggar can say which is
the niggard." He said: "I speak of them from experience; for they
station dependants by their doors, and plant surly porters at their
gates, to deny admittance to the worthy, and to lay violent hands upon
the collars of the elect, and say: 'There is nobody at home'; and verily
they tell what is true:--When the master has not reason or judgment,
understanding or discernment, the porter reported right of him, saying:
'There is nobody in the house.'"

I replied: "They are excusable, inasmuch as they are worried out of
their lives by importunate memorialists, and jaded to their hearts by
indigent solicitors; and it might be reasonably doubted whether it would
satisfy the eye of the covetous if the sands of the desert could be
turned into pearls:--The eye of the greedy is not to be filled with
worldly riches, any more than a well can be replenished from the dew of
night. And had Hatim Tayi, who dwelt in the desert, come to live in a
city, he would have been overwhelmed with the importunities of
mendicants, and they would have torn the clothes from his back:--Look
not towards me, lest thou should draw the eyes of others, for at the
mendicant's hand no good can be expected."

He said: "I pity their condition." I replied: "Not so; but you envy them
their property." We were thus warm in argument, and both of us close
engaged. Whatever chess pawn he might advance I would set one in
opposition to it; and whenever he put my king in check, I would relieve
him with my queen; till he had exhausted all the coin in the purse of
his resolution, and expended all the arrows of the quiver of his
argument. "Take heed and retreat not from the orator's attack, for
nothing is left him but metaphor and hyperbole. Wield thy polemics and
law citations, for the wordy rhetorician made a show of arms over his
gate, but has not a soldier within his fort":--At length, having no
syllogism left, I made him crouch in mental submission. He stretched
forth the arm of violence, and began with vain abuse. As is the case
with the ignorant