“I will not pay for them.”
“But you must pay for them.”
Whilst this dispute was going on another man of Gotham had ridden up, with a sack of meal behind him on his donkey, and hearing the quarrel between his neighbours about the one’s wife, whom he had just seen safe at home, and about the other’s sheep, when there were no sheep there, he got off his donkey and called to the two disputants to lift the sack of meal upon his shoulders. When they had done so, first untying the mouth of the sack, he emptied the meal over the side of the bridge into the river. Then, holding up the sack with the mouth down, before his astonished neighbours, he said,—
“Will you tell me how much meal there is in this sack?”
The Three Wise Gothamites.
“Why, none,” both said, “since you have just emptied it out.”
“Well,” he answered, “just so much wit is in your two heads when you dispute about wife and sheep, and neither wife nor sheep are here.”
Now which was the wisest of the three?