Two dervishes of Khorasan were fellow-companions on a journey. One was so spare and moderate that he would break his fast only every other night, and the other so robust and intemperate that he ate three meals a day. It happened that they were taken up at the gate of a city on suspicion of being spies, and both together put into a place, the entrance of which was built up with mud. After a fortnight it was discovered that they were innocent, when, on breaking open the door, they found the strong man dead, and the weak one alive and well. They were astonished at this circumstance. A wise man said, "The contrary of this had been strange, for this one was a voracious eater, and not having strength to support a want of food, perished; and that other was abstemious, and being patient, according to his habitual practice, survived it.--When a person is habitually temperate, and a hardship shall cross him, he will get over it with ease; but if he has pampered his body and lived in luxury, and shall get into straitened circumstances, he must perish." VIII A certain philosopher admonished his son against eating to an excess, because repletion made a man sick. The boy answered, "O father, hunger will kill. Have you not heard what the wits have remarked, To die of a surfeit were better than to bear with a craving appetite?" The father said, "Study moderation, for the Most High God has told us in the Koran:--'_Eat ye and drink ye, but not to an excess_:'--eat not so voraciously that the food shall be regorged from thy mouth, nor so abstemiously that from depletion life shall desert thee:--though food be the means of preserving breath in the body. Yet, if taken to excess, it will prove noxious. If conserve of roses be frequently indulged in it will cause a surfeit, whereas a crust of bread, eaten after a long interval, will relish like conserve of roses." XI In a battle with the Tartars, a gallant young man was grievously wounded. Somebody said to him, "A certain merchant has a stock of the mummy antidote; if you would ask him, he might perhaps accommodate you with a portion of it." They say that merchant was so notorious for his stinginess, that--"If, in the place of his loaf of bread, the orb of the sun had been in his wallet, nobody would have seen daylight in the world till the day of judgment." The spirited youth replied: "Were I to ask him for this antidote, he might give it, or he might not; and if he did it might cure me, or it might not; at any rate, to ask such a man were itself a deadly poison!" Whatever thou wouldst ask of the mean, in obligation, might add to the body, but would take from the soul.--And philosophers have observed, that were the water of immortality, for example, to be sold at the price of the reputation, a wise man would not buy it, for an honorable death is preferable to a life of infamy.--Wert thou to eat colocynth from the hand of the kind-hearted, it would relish better than a sweetmeat from that of the crabbed.