when a person came before me and gave testimony that a certain garden,
of which he mentioned the boundaries, belonged to a man whom he named.
As I had some doubts of his veracity, I asked him how many trees were
in that garden, and he said to me, after a short silence: "How long is
it since our lord the Kadi has been giving judgment in this hall?" I
told him the time. "How many beams," said he, "are there in the roof?"
On which I acknowledged that he was in the right, and I received his
testimony.'

V.

It is a curious circumstance that Homer the Greek poet, Radaki the
Persian poet, and Bashshar bin Burd the Arabian poet, were all blind.
Here is a specimen of one of the verses of the last-named:

'Yes, my friends! my ear is charmed by a person in that tribe; for the
ear is sometimes enamoured sooner than the eye. You say that I am led
by one whom I never saw; know that the ear as well as the eye can
inform the mind of facts.'

He composed also the following verse, which is the most gallant of any
made by the poets of that epoch:

'Yes, by Allah! I love the magic of your eyes, and yet I dread the
weapons by which so many lovers fell.'

VI.

Several sayings of Al-Hasan bin Sahl, the vizier to the Khalif
Al-Mamun, have been preserved. Once he himself wrote at the end of a
letter of recommendation, dictated to his secretary: 'I have been told
that on the day of judgment a man will be questioned respecting the
use he made of the influence given him by his rank in the world, in
the same manner as he will be questioned respecting the use he made of
the superfluity of his wealth.'

Again he said to his sons: 'My sons, learn the use of language; it is
by it that man holds his preeminence over other animals; the higher
the skill which you attain in the use of language, the nearer you
approach to the ideal of human nature.'

VII.

It is related of Sari-as Sakati, the celebrated Sufi, that he said
that for twenty years he never ceased imploring Divine pardon for
having once exclaimed, 'Praise be to God!' and on being asked the
reason he said: 'A fire broke out in Baghdad, and a person came up to
me and told me that my shop had escaped, on which I uttered these
words; and even to this moment I repent of having said so, because it
showed that I wished better to myself than to others.'

VIII.

Al-Ahnaf bin Kais, whose prudence was proverbial among the Arabs, used
to say: 'I have followed three rules of