" "With all
my heart," answered Shehrzad, "if the King give me leave." And he
said, "Tell thy story, and that quickly." Then said she, "They
say, O King of the age and lord of the time and the day, that
THE THREE APPLES.
The Khalif Haroun er Reshid summoned his Vizier Jaafer one night
and said to him, 'I have a mind to go down into the city and
question the common people of the conduct of the officers charged
with its government; and those of whom they complain, we will
depose, and those whom they commend, we will advance.' Quoth
Jaafer, 'I hear and obey.' So the Khalif and Jaafer and Mesrour
went down into the town and walked about the streets and markets
till, as they were passing through a certain alley, they came
upon an old man walking along at a leisurely pace, with a
fishing-net and a basket on his head and a staff in his hand, and
heard him repeat the following verses:
They tell me I shine, by my wisdom and wit, Midst the rest of my
kind, as the moon in the night.
"A truce to your idle discourses!" I cry, "What's knowledge,
indeed, unattended by might?"
If you offered me, knowledge and wisdom and all, with my inkhorn
and papers, in pawn for a mite,
To buy one day's victual, the pledge they'd reject And cast, like
an unread petition, from sight.
Sorry, indeed, is the case of the poor, And his life, what a load
of chagrin and despite!
In summer, he's pinched for a living and cowers O'er the fire-pot
in winter, for warmth and for light.
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