The Laughable Stories Collected by Mar Gregory John

STORIES OF WONDERFUL EVENTS AND OCCURRENCES. 1 7
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burn properly. And the flame caught hold of his fingers
—now at that time they burned naphtha in their lamps
and as he at once put his mouth to spit on them,
Straightway the fire caught his beard and face, and
although he went and threw himself into the cistern of
water, the whole of him was consumed.
DCLXIX. A certain nobleman was sitting at table
eating, and the smell of his cooked meat was wafted
out into the market-place; and a poor man came and
begged for a little of it. And the wife of the nobleman
rose up to give him some, but he cried out to her
and would not allow her to do so. And it came to
pass, when the nobleman had eaten and had risen up
from the table, that he rose up to go on the roof,
and he fell down from the top of the ladder and died;
and his wife inherited everything that he had. Then
she returned to her fathers house and began to give
away the old clothes of her husband, among which was
a very old pillow, and one day she saw a certain poor
man and gave this to him. And the poor man went
and emptied out the hay stuffing that he might wash
the pillow-case, and he found inside it one thousand
dinars of gold. Then he took the money and obtained
for himself goodly apparel, and he took his seat in the
clothworkers bazaar; and he told the old women to
look out for a wife for him to marry. And it came to
pass that one of them went and found the lady who
had given him the pillow, and the woman returned
and said to him, ''Behold, I have found a beautiful
"widow, but she is a young and a God-fearing woman,
"and she hath inherited great wealth from her first
"husband." And the man was pleased with her and
sent to her the gifts of a bridegroom to a bride, and
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