Of Bishr Ibn Al-Harith Al-Hafi, one of Baghdad's holiest ascetics, it is told that his choice of the life of saintliness thus came about. Happening to find on the road a leaf of paper with the name of God written on it, which had been trampled underfoot, he bought ghalia with some dirhems which he had about him, and, having perfumed the leaf with it, deposited it in a hole in a wall. Afterwards he had a dream, in which a voice seemed to say to him: "O Bishr! thou hast perfumed my name, and I shall surely cause thine to be a sweet odour both in this world and the next." When he awoke, he gave up the world, and turned to God. Bishr being once asked with what sauce he ate his bread, replied: "I think on good health, and I take that as my sauce." One of his prayers was this: "O, my God! deprive me of notoriety, if thou hast given it to me in this world for the purpose of putting me to shame in the next." It was a true saying of another famous ascetic, Al-Fudail, that, when God loves a man, He increases his afflictions, and when He hates a man, He increases his worldly prosperity. Asceticism, however, had not robbed him of human sympathy or warped his nature, for he said at another time: "For a man to be polite to his company and make himself agreeable to them is better than to pass nights in prayer and days in fasting." Abu Ali Ar-Razi said: "I kept company with Al-Fudail during thirty years, and I never saw him laugh or smile but on one occasion, and that was the death of his son. On my asking him the reason, he replied: 'Whatever is pleasing to God is pleasing to me.'" Maruf Al-Karkhi, another celebrated saint, who died in Baghdad in 805, had a sensible elasticity. Passing, one day, by a water-carrier who was crying out: "God have mercy on him who drinketh!" he went up to him and took a drink, although he was at that time keeping a strict fast. Some one, horrified at the impiety, said to him: "Art thou not keeping a fast?" He replied: "Yes, I am, but I hoped for the fulfilment of that man's prayer." One of the sayings of Abd Al-Ala, a man of holy life, was this: "Buying what one does not require, is selling what one requires." Another pious man, Abu Othman Al-Mazini the grammarian, used to tell the following story against himself: "There was a person who, for a long time, studied under me the grammar of Sibawaih, and who said to me, when he got to the end of the book, 'May God requite you well! As for me, I have not understood a letter of it.'" Yahya, a celebrated preacher, on being asked by a descendant of the Prophet, "Tell me, Master! and may God assist you! what is your opinion of us who are the people of the house,"--that is to say, the members of Muhammad's family,--replied: "It is that which I would say of clay kneaded with the water of divine revelation and sprinkled with the water of the heavenly mission: can it give out any other odour than the musk of true direction and the ambergris of piety?"