gdom of
heaven with all his world of vanities, but is cast down into hell."

* * * * *

And now a few more Indian and other stories of the Gothamite class to
conclude the present section. In Malava there were two Brahman brothers,
and the wealth inherited from their father was left jointly between
them. And while they were dividing that wealth they quarrelled about one
having too little and one having too much, and they made a teacher
learned in the Vedas arbitrator, and he said to them, "You must divide
everything your father left into two halves, so that you may not quarrel
about the inequality of the division." When the two fools heard this,
they divided every single thing into two equal parts--house, beds, in
fact, all their property, including their cattle. Henry Stephens (Henri
Estienne), in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,[12] relates
some very amusing noodle-stories, such as of him who, burning his shins
before the fire, and not having wit enough to go back from it, sent for
masons to remove the chimney; of the fool who ate the doctor's
prescription, because he was told to "take it;" of another wittol who,
having seen one spit upon iron to try whether it was hot, did likewise
with his porridge; and, best of all, he tells of a fellow who was hit on
the back with a stone as he rode upon his mule, and cursed the animal
for kicking him. This last exquisite jest has its analogue in that of
the Irishman who was riding on an ass one fine day, when the beast, by
kicking at the flies that annoyed him, got one of its hind feet
entangled in the stirrup, whereupon the rider dismounted, saying,
"Faith, if you're going to get up, it's time I was getting down."

The poet Ovid alludes to the story of Ino persuading the women of the
country to roast the wheat before it was sown, which may have come to
India through the Greeks, since we are told in the _Katha Sarit
Sagara_ of a foolish villager who one day roasted some sesame seeds,
and finding them nice to eat, he sowed a large quantity of roasted
seeds, hoping that similar ones would come up. The story also occurs in
Coelho's _Contes Portuguezes_, and is probably of Buddhistic
origin. And an analogous story is told of an Irishman who gave his hens
hot water, in order that they should lay boiled eggs!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This notion, that schoolmasters "lack wit," however absurd, seems to
have been entertained from ancient times, an