“Min Allah! God forbid that I should acknowledge it, or I should consider myself as unfit to assume the office in which your sublime highness has invested me.”
“Although unnecessary for me, I thought it might be requisite for a vizier,” observed the pacha.
“Reading may be necessary, I will allow,” replied Mustapha; “but I trust I can soon prove to your highness that writing is as dangerous as it is useless. More men have been ruined by that unfortunate acquirement, than by any other; and dangerous as it is to all, it is still more dangerous to men in high power. For instance, your sublime highness sends a message in writing, which is ill-received, and it is produced against you; but had it been a verbal message, you could deny it, and bastinado to death the Tartar who carried it, as a proof of your sincerity.”
“Very true, Mustapha.”
“The grandfather of your slave,” continued the barber-vizier, “held the situation of receiver-general at the custom-house; and he was always in a fury when he was obliged to take up the pen. It was his creed, that no government could prosper when writing was in general use. ‘Observe, Mustapha,’ said he to me one day, ‘here is the curse of writing,—for all the money which is paid in, I am obliged to give a receipt. What is the consequence? that government loses many thousand sequins every year; for when I apply to them for a second payment, they produce their receipt. Now if it had not been for this cursed invention of writing, Inshallah! they should have paid twice, if not thrice over. Remember, Mustapha,’ continued he, ‘that reading and writing only clog the wheels of government.’”
“Very true, Mustapha,” observed the pacha, “then we will have no writing.”
“Yes, your sublime highness, every thing in writing from others, but nothing in writing from ourselves. I have a young Greek slave, who can be employed in these matters. He reads well. I have lately employed him in reading to me the stories of ‘Thousand and one Nights.’”
“Stories,” cried the pacha; “what are they about? I never heard of them; I’m very fond of stories.”
“If it would pleasure your sublime highness to hear these stories read, the slave will wait your commands,” replied the vizier.
“Bring him this evening, Mustapha; we will smoke a pipe, and listen to them; I’m very fond of stories—they always send me to sleep.”