t he only got well laughed at for his
pains.

We have an amusing commentary on the maxim that "distress is sure to
come from being in the company of fools" in the following, from the
Canarese story-book entitled _Kathe Manjari_: A foolish fellow
travelled with a shopkeeper. When it became dark, the fool lay down in
the road to sleep, but the shopkeeper took shelter in a hollow tree.
Presently some thieves came along the road, and one struck his feet
against the fool's legs, upon which he exclaimed to his companions,
"What is this? Is it a piece of wood?" The fool was angry, and said, "Go
away! go away! Is there a knot, well tied, containing five annas, in the
loins of a plank in your house?" The thieves then seized him, and took
away his annas. As they were moving off, they asked if the money was
good or bad, to which the noodle replied, "Ha! ha! is it of my money you
speak in that way, and want to know whether it is good or bad? Look--
there is a shopkeeper in that tree," pointing with his finger--"show it
to him." Then the thieves went up to the shopkeeper and robbed him of
two hundred pagodas.

In our next story, of the villagers who ate the buffalo, is exemplified
the fact that "fools, in the conceit of their folly, while they deny
what need not be denied, reveal what it is their interest to suppress,
in order to get themselves believed." Some villagers took a buffalo
belonging to a certain man, and killed it in an enclosure outside the
village, under a banyan tree, and dividing the flesh, ate it up. The
owner of the buffalo went and complained to the king, and he had the
villagers who had eaten the animal brought before him. The proprietor of
the buffalo said before the king, in their presence, "These men took my
buffalo under a banyan tree near the tank, and killed and ate it before
my eyes," whereupon an old fool among the villagers said, "There is no
tank or banyan tree in our village. He says what is not true; where did
we kill his buffalo or eat it?" When the man heard this, he replied,
"What! are there not a banyan tree and a tank on the east side of the
village? Moreover, you ate my buffalo on the eighth day of the lunar
month." The old fool then said, "There is no east side or eighth day in
our village." On hearing this, the king laughed, and said, to encourage
the fool, "You are a truthful person; you never say anything false; so
tell me the truth: did you eat that buffalo, or did you not?" The old
fool