ripe fruit again, in the pedant who lay down to sleep, and, finding he
had no pillow, bade his servant place a jar under his head, after
stuffing it full of feathers to render it soft; again, in the
cross-grained fellow who had some honey for sale, and a man coming up to
him and inquiring the price, he upset the jar, and then replied, "You
may shed my heart's blood like that before I tell such as you;" and
again, in the man of Abdera who tried to hang himself, when the rope
broke, and he hurt his head; but after having the wound dressed by the
doctor, he went and accomplished his purpose. And we seem to have a
trace of them in the story of the pedant who dreamt that a nail had
pierced his foot, and in the morning he bound it up; when he told a
friend of his mishap, he said, "Why do you sleep barefooted?"

The following jest is spread--_mutatis mutandis_--over all Europe:
A pedant, a bald man, and a barber, making a journey in company, agreed
to watch in turn during the night. It was the barber's watch first. He
propped up the sleeping pedant, and shaved his head, and when his time
came, awoke him. When the pedant felt his head bare, "What a fool is
this barber," he cried, "for he has roused the bald man instead of me!"

A variant of this story is related of a raw Highlander, fresh from the
heather, who put up at an inn in Perth, and shared his bed with a negro.
Some coffee-room jokers having blackened his face during the night, when
he was called, as he had desired, very early next morning, and got up,
he saw the reflection of his face in the mirror, and exclaimed in a
rage, "Tuts, tuts! The silly body has waukened the wrang man."

In connection with these two stories may be cited the following, from a
Persian jest-book: A poor wrestler, who had passed all his life in
forests, resolved to try his fortune in a great city, and as he drew