e former was fully worth a hundred
ducats, and the widow handed over one ducat--for which
the horse was nominally sold--to the mendicant friars.

For readiness of wit the Arabs would seem to compare very favourably
with any race, European or Asiatic, and many examples of their
felicitous repartees are furnished by native historians and grammarians.
One of the best is: When a khalif was addressing the people in a mosque
on his accession to the khalifate, and told them, among other things in
his own praise, that the plague which had so long raged in Baghdad had
ceased immediately he became khalif; an old fellow present shouted: "Of
a truth, Allah was too merciful to give us both _thee_ and the plague at
the same time."

* * * * *

The story of the Unlucky Slippers in Cardonne's _Melanges de Litterature
Orientale_ is a very good specimen of Arabian humour:[32]

[32] Cardonne took this story from a Turkish work entitled
"_Aja'ib el-ma'asir wa ghara'ib en-nawadir_ (the Wonders
of Remarkable Incidents and Rarities of Anecdotes)," by
Ahmed ibn Hemdem Khetkhody, which was composed for
Sultan Murad IV, who reigned from A.D. 1623 to 1640.

In former times there lived in the famous city of Baghdad a miserly old
merchant named Abu Kasim. Although very rich, his clothes were mere
rags; his turban was of coarse cloth, and exceedingly dirty; but his
slippers were perfect curiosities--the soles were studded with great
nails, while the upper leathers consisted of as many different pieces as
the celebrated ship Argos. He had worn them during ten years, and the
art of the ablest cobblers in Baghdad had been exhausted in preventing a
total separation of the parts; in short, by frequent accessions of nails
and patches they had become so heavy that they passed into a proverb,
and anything ponderous was compared to Abu Kasim's slippers. Walking one
day in the great bazaar, the purchase of a large quantity of crystal was
offered to this merchant, and, thinking it a bargain, he bought it. Not
long after this, hearing that a bankrupt perfumer had nothing left to
sell but some rose-water, he took advantage of the poor man's
misfortune, and purchased it for half the value. These lucky
speculations had put him into good humour, but instead of giving an
entertainment, according to the custom of merchants when they have made
a profitable bargain, Abu Kasim deemed i