It’s not the wine that makes a man drunk; it’s the man himself. A whisper on earth sounds like thunder in heaven. To get a favor granted is harder than to kill a tiger. Sweep the snow from your own door. If there were no error there could be no truth. A needle never pricks with both ends. Don’t put two saddles on one horse. Trust nature rather than a bad doctor. * * * * * The Japanese offer little that can be quoted. Their comedies are long and not very funny, their wit is heavy and bitterly satirical. One specimen is given from _The Land of Dreams_ by Kiokutei Bakin. _ON CLOTHES AND COMFORTS_ However much money you have, you will not keep it long; it will leave you, just like a traveler who has stayed overnight at an inn. The only substantial things in life are food and drink. Any little house you can just crawl into is large enough. The only difference between an emperor’s palace and a straw hut is in their size and their situation, one being in town and the other in the country. A single room, with a mat long enough for you to stretch out your whole body, is quite sufficient lodging. As for the clothes which you dress your carcass in, the richest brocades and the commonest sackcloth differ only in being clean or dirty. After you are dead, no one can tell, from looking at your naked body, what sort of clothes you wore while alive. If these facts were to become recognized, our clothes would be patched with any sort of material or color. Now, however, a man will buy new, expensive garments which he does not really want, owe the money for them, strut about in these borrowed plumes, and finally pawn them. --_The Land of Dreams._ _COLLECTIONS_ Apologues and stories, now common to all the world, had their origin in remote antiquity. Eastern narratives were for the most part brought to Europe orally, but some were later translated from the Oriental writings. Since at first, Religion and Learning went hand in hand, these stories were of a moral and instructive nature. Their wit was the wit of wisdom, the pithiness of graphic representation of truth. But with the development of the wit of amusement, the rise of ribald laughter and the supremacy of priests and monks, the stories took on a mirthful character which may or may not have added to their efficacy as cautionary teachings. Humor, then, as now, was founded on the feeling of superiority which comes from knowledge. The stories were invariably of the discomfiture of some foolish person, and thereby, either definitely or tacitly advised against that particular foolishness. Narrative fiction was entirely in parables or apologues, the latter term having come to be used exclusively for the tales in which animals are invested with human traits. Fables, also, is a term usually restricted to moral lessons taught by anecdotes of beasts in human conditions.