I was seated in a vessel, along with some persons of distinction, when a boat sunk astern of us and two brothers were drawn into the whirlpool. One of our gentlemen called to the pilot, saying, "Save those two drowning men and I will give you a hundred dinars." The pilot went and rescued one of them, but the other perished. I observed, "That man's time was come, therefore you were tardy in assisting him, and alert in saving this other." The pilot smiled, and replied, "What you say is the essence of inevitable necessity; yet was my zeal more hearty in rescuing this one, because on an occasion when I was tired in the desert he set me on a camel; whereas, when a boy, I had received a horsewhipping from that other."—God Almighty was all justice and equity: whoever labored unto good experienced good in himself; and he who toiled unto evil experienced evil.—So long as thou art able grate nobody's heart, for in this path there must be thorns. Expedite the concerns of the poor and needy; for thy own concerns may need to be expedited.
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XXXVII
A person announced to Nushirowan the Just, saying, "I have heard that God, glorious and great, has removed from this world a certain man who was your enemy." He said, "Have you had any intelligence that he has overlooked me? In the death of a rival I have no room for exultation, since my life also is not to last forever."
XXXVIII
At the court of Kisra, or Nushirowan, a cabinet council was debating some state affair. Abu-zarchamahr, who sat as president, was silent. They asked him, "Why do you not join us in this discussion?" He replied, "Such ministers of state are like physicians, and a physician will prescribe a medicine only to a sick man; accordingly, so long as I see that your opinions are judicious, it were ill-judged in me to obtrude a word.—While business can proceed without my interference, it does not behoove me to speak on the subject; but were I to see a blind man walking into a pit, I would be much to blame if I remained silent."
XXXIX
When he reduced the kingdom of Misr, or Egypt, to obedience, Harun-al-Rashid said, "In contempt of that impious rebel (Pharaoh), who, in his pride of the sovereignty of Egypt, boasted a divinity, I will bestow its government only on the vilest of my slaves." He had a negro bondsman, called Khosayib, preciously stupid, and him he appointed to rule over Egypt. They tell us that his judgment and understanding were such, that when a body of farmers complained to him, saying, "We had planted some cotton shrubs on the banks of the Nile, and the rains came unseasonably, and swept them all away;"—he replied, "You ought to sow wool, that it might not be swept away!" A good and holy man heard this, and said: "Were our fortune to be increased in proportion to our knowledge, none could be scantier than the share of the fool; but fortune will bestow such wealth upon the ignorant as shall astonish a hundred of the learned. Power and fortune depend not on knowledge, they are obtained only through the aid of heaven; for it has often happened in this world that the illiterate are honored, and the wise held in scorn. The fool in his idleness found a treasure under a ruin; the chemist, or projector, fell the victim of disappointment and chagrin."
CHAPTER II
Of the Morals of Dervishes