but he was pleased, hoping that the deceased had left him something.
He never saw a bride about to be conducted through the streets to the
house of the bridegroom but he prepared his own house for her reception,
hoping that her friends would bring her to his house by mistake. If he
saw a workman making a box, he took care to tell him that he was putting
in one or two boards too many, hoping that he would give him what was
over, or, at least, something for the suggestion. He is said to have
followed a man who was chewing mastic (a sort of gum, chewed, like
betel, by Orientals as a pastime) for a whole mile, thinking he was
perhaps eating food, intending, if so, to ask him for some. When the
youths of the town jeered and taunted him, he told them there was a
wedding at such a house, in order to get rid of them (because they would
go to get a share of the bonbons distributed there); but, as soon as
they were gone, it struck him that possibly what he had told them was
true, and that they would not have quitted him had they not been aware
of its truth; and he actually followed them himself to see what he could
do, though exposing himself thereby to fresh taunts from them. When
asked whether he knew anyone more covetous than himself, he said: "Yes;
a sheep I once had, that climbed to an upper stage of my house, and,
seeing a rainbow, mistook it for a rope of hay, and jumping at it, broke
her neck"--whence "Ashaab's sheep" became proverbial among the Arabs for
covetousness as well as Ashaab himself.

* * * * *

Hospitality has ever been the characteristic virtue of the Arabs, and a
mean, stingy disposition is rarely to be found among them. A droll story
of an Arab of the latter description has been rendered into verse by the
Persian poet Liwa'i, the substance of which is as follows: An Arab
merchant who had been trading between Mecca and Damascus, at length
turned his face homeward, and had reached within one stage of his house
when he sat down to rest and to refresh himself with the contents of his
wallet. While he was eating, a Bedouin, weary and hungry, came up, and,
hoping to be invited to share his repast, saluted him, "Peace be with
thee!" which the merchant returned, and asked the nomad who he was and
whence he came. "I have come from thy house," was the answer. "Then,"
said the merchant, "how fares my son Ahmed, absence from whom has
grieved me sore?" "Thy son grows apace in health and in