The laughable stories collected by Mâr Gregory John Bar Hebræ

STORIES ABOUT WEALTHY AND LIBERAL AND GENEROUS MEN.
CCCCXIII. A certain poet rebuked a certain king
in the following words, saying,
"I made a mistake in praising him having drunk wine from out
of his
cups,
"For evil lieth in ambush in his cups, and his walls are built
upon it."
Now when the
king heard these words he was neither
grieved nor angry, but he sent to him a thousand
dinars, and said to him, "Spend these on thy supper,
"and come not inside our walls lest the evil which is
"in our cups meeteth thee."
CCCCXIV. The wife of a certain liberal and wealthy
man said to him, "I have never seen any behaviour
"worse than that of thy brethren,
for in the time of thy
"prosperity they come round about thee, but in the
"time
of thy poverty and misery they kept aloof from
"thee." He replied to her, "This ariseth from the
"nicety of their discretion, because they do not wish
"to be a weight upon us when our hand is forced to
"give."
CCCCXV. A man came to a certain liberal man
and asked alms of him, and he unwittingly set the end
of the stick upon which he rested upon his toe, and
leaned his weight upon it. And when the rich man