in all kinds of pleasure.
He offers the king the apple, explaining the terms of his father's
bequest, and saying that he considers him the greatest of all fools, in
not having made a proper use of his year of sovereignty.--A common oral
form of this story is to the effect that a court jester came to the
bedside of his dying master, who told him that he was going on a very
long journey, and the jester inquiring whether he had made due
preparation was answered in the negative. "Then," said the fool,
"prithee take my bauble, for thou art truly the greatest of all fools."

OTHER RABBINICAL LEGENDS AND TALES.

As analogues, or variants, of incidents in several wide-spread European
popular tales, other Hebrew legends are cited in some of my former
books; e.g.: The True Son, in _Popular Tales and Fictions_, vol. i, p.
14; Moses and the Angel (the ways of Providence: the original of
Parnell's "Hermit"), vol. i, p. 25; a mystical hymn, "A kid, a kid, my
Father bought," the possible original of our nursery cumulative rhyme of
"The House that Jack built," vol. i, p. 291; the Reward of Sabbath
observance, vol. i, p. 399; the Intended Divorce, vol. ii, p. 328, of
which, besides the European variants there cited, other versions will be
found in Prof. Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_: "The Clever Girl" and
Notes; the Lost Camel, in _A Group of Eastern Romances and Stories_, p.
512. In _Originals and Analogues of some of Chaucer's 'Canterbury
Tales'_ (for the Chaucer Society) I have cited two curious Jewish
versions of the Franklin's Tale, in the paper entitled "The Damsel's
Rash Promise," pp. 315, 317. A selection of Hebrew Facetiae is given at
the end of the papers on Oriental Wit and Humour in the present volume
(p. 117); and an amusing story, also from the Talmud, is reproduced in
my _Book of Sindibad_, p. 103, _note_, of the Athenian and the witty
Tailor; and in the same work, p. 340, _note_, reference is made to a
Jewish version of the famous tale of the Matron of Ephesus. There may be
more in these books which I cannot call to mind.

AN ARABIAN TALE OF LOVE.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_.

Every land has its favourite tale of love: in France, that of Abelard
and Eloisa, in Italy, of Petrarch and Laura; all Europe has the touching
tale of Romeo and Juliet in common; an