Jáhiz relates: “I never experienced so much shame as this event occasioned me. One day a woman took my hand and led me to the shop of a master metal founder, saying to him: ‘Be it thus formed.’ I being puzzled to know what this conduct signified, questioned the master, who in reply said: ‘She had ordered me to make her a figure in the form of Satan. When I told her that I did not know in what semblance to make it, she brought thee, as thou knowest, and said: ‘Make it in this semblance.’” * * * * * The same learned man, too, gives us this relation: “As I was once standing in the street, in conversation with a friend, a woman came and standing opposite me, gazed in my face. When her staring had exceeded all bounds, I said to my slave: ‘Go to that woman and ask her what she seeks.’ The slave returning to me thus reported her answer: ‘I wished to inflict some punishment on my eyes which had committed a great fault, and could find none more severe for them than the sight of thy ugly face.’” A person who perceived an ugly man asking pardon for his sins, and praying for deliverance from the fire of hell, said to him: “Wherefore, O friend, with such a countenance as thou hast, would’st thou cheat hell, and give such a face reluctantly to the fire?” * * * * * An assembly of people being seated together, and engaged in discussing the merits and defects of men, one of them observed: “Whoever has not two seeing eyes is but half a man; and whoever has not in his house a beautiful bride is but half a man; finally he who cannot swim in the sea is but half a man.” A blind man in the company who had no wife, and could not swim, called out to him: “O my dear friend, thou hast laid down an extraordinary principle, and cast me so far out of the circle of manhood, that still half a man is required before I can take the name of one who is no man.” * * * * * A Beduin having lost a camel, made an oath that when he found it he would sell it for one diram. When however he found it, repenting of his oath, he tied a cat to its neck, and called out: “Who will buy the camel for one diram and the cat for a hundred dirams; but both together, as I will not part them.” “How cheap,” said a person who had arrived there, “would be this camel, had it not this collar attached to its neck!” * * * * * A Beduin who had lost a camel, proclaimed: “Whoever brings me my camel shall have two camels as a reward.” “Out, man!” said they to him; “what kind of business is this? Is the whole ass load of less value than a small additional bundle laid upon it?” “You have this excuse for your words,” replied he, “that you have never tasted the pleasure of finding, and the sweetness of recovering what has been lost.” * * * * *