Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 5.djvu/144

 Know that I was sitting one day at the window, when lo! there passed by a man, singing the following distich,

Umm Amr, [FN#169] thy boons Allah repay! *         Give back my heart bet where it may!

And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

When it was the Four Hundred and Third Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the schoolmaster continued,  When I heard the man humming these words as he passed along the street, I said to myself Except this Umm Amru were without equal in the world, the poets had not celebrated her in ode and canzon.  So I fell in love with her; but, two days after, the same man passed, singing the following couplet,

Ass and Umm Amr went their way; * Nor she, nor ass returned for aye.

Thereupon I knew she was dead and mourned for her. This was three days ago, and I have been mourning ever since. So I left him, (concluded the learned one) and fared forth, having assured myself of the weakness of the gerund-grinders wit.   And they tell another and a similar tale of THE FOOLISH DOMINIE [FN#170]

Once upon a time, a schoolmaster was visited by a man of letters who entered a school and, sitting down by the hosts side, entered into discourse with him and found him an accomplished theologian, poet, grammarian, philologist and poet; intelligent, well bred and pleasant spoken; whereat he wondered, saying in himself, 