Page:Gems of Arabic Literature.djvu/22

 thy hands in no time". "What was that?" said the fowler. The sparrow replied, "Hadst thou killed me, thou wouldst have found in my crop two gems of rubies, each weighing fifty mithcals ".

Now, when the fowler heard the sparrow's words, he was filled with grief, and, biting his fingers, said, "Thou hast deceived me, O sparrow; but tell me the third saying". "How can I tell thee the third one", replied the sparrow, "when thou hast forgotton the first two in a moment? Did I not tell thee not to regret the past, or to believe that the impossible is possible? How canst thou (then) believe that there are two jewels in my crop, each weighing fifty mithcals, when if thou wert to weigh me with my feathers, flesh, bones, and entrails my weight would not amount to ten mithcals?. Thou hast also repented of and art sorry for setting free what is (now) lost to thee (for ever)". It then flew away, and left the fowler from whose snare it had escaped by its own stratagem.

This is an example of one who gives counsel to others, but does not apply it in his own case.

There is a story told of a pigeon who used to hatch her young at the top of a high tree that towered into the sky. When she commenced building her nest, the task was only completed after much toil and trouble owing to the great height of the date-palm. When she had finished building her nest, she laid her eggs and sat upon them; and when she had hatched them, and her brood had grown up, a fox who had known from experience the precise time in which she had her brood, used to come and stand at the foot of the date-palm and