We boys ran after him always shouting: ‘Little Muck! Little Muck!’ We had also made a little rhyme about him which we sang in honour of him now and then, namely:
‘Little Muck, Little Muck,
What an awful fright you look!
In a big house you reside,
Only once a month outside.
You are a plucky dwarf, but still
Your head is almost like a hill;
Do but just turn round and look,
Run and catch us, Little Muck!’
We had often played this joke, and I must confess to my shame mine was the worst. I often pulled him by his cloak, and once I planted my foot on the end of his great slippers from behind, so that he fell down. This at first caused me great delight, but I soon ceased to laugh when I saw Little Muck go towards my father’s house. He really entered it, and remained in it for some time. I secreted myself behind the door and saw Little Muck come out again, accompanied by my father, who held him respectfully by the hand, and took leave of him at the door, after many bows. I felt very uneasy, and remained for a long time in my hiding-place; but at length hunger, which I dreaded still more than the thrashing, forced me to come out, and, shame-faced and with bent head, I presented myself before my father. ‘I hear you have insulted the good Muck?’ he said in a very stern voice. ‘I want to tell you the history of this Muck, and I am certain you will never mock him again; in any case, however, before or after, you will get your punishment.’ This punishment meant twenty-five strokes, which he counted with only too great an exactness. He took his long pipe, screwed off the amber mouth-piece, and acquitted himself more vigorously of the task than he had ever done before.
From a wash drawing by James Pryde
“I hear you have insulted the good Muck” he said in a very stern voice (page 102)
After having received the five-and-twenty strokes, my father ordered me to pay attention, and related to me the story of Little Muck.
The father of Little Muck, whose real name was Mukrah, was a distinguished but poor man here in Nicea. He, too, lived in almost as solitary a manner as his son does at present. Unfortunately, he did not like him, because his dwarfed stature made him ashamed of the boy, and consequently he had him brought up in ignorance. Little Muck, when in his sixteenth year, was still a frolicsome child; and his father, a stern man, continually reproached him with still being so childish, and also on account of his ignorance and stupidity.
The old man, however, had a bad fall one day, in consequence of which he died, leaving behind little Muck, poor and ignorant. His harsh relatives, to whom the deceased owed more than he was able to pay, turned the poor little fellow out of the house, and advised him to go abroad to seek his fortune. Little Muck said that he was already prepared for the journey; and only asked to be allowed to take his father’s clothes with him, to which they agreed. His father had been a tall, powerful man, and therefore his clothes did not fit him. Muck, however, soon devised an expedient; he cut off all that was superfluous with respect to length, and then donned the garments. He seemed, however, to have forgotten the curtailing of them in their amplitude, hence his whimsical attire, which he wears to this day; the large turban, the broad girdle, the wide trousers, the little blue cloak, all these are heirlooms of his father, which he has always worn; his father’s long Damascus dagger he planted in his girdle, and with a little staff in his hand, he set out on his journey.