An Arab, suffering under all the extremity of thirst in the desert, was
saying:--"_Would to God that yet, before I perish, I could but for one
day gratify my wish: that a stream of water might dash against my knees,
and I could fill my leathern flask or stomach with it_."

In like manner a traveller had got bewildered in the great desert, and
had neither provisions nor strength left, yet a few dirams remained with
him in his scrip. He kept wandering about, but could not find the path,
and sunk under his fatigue. A party of travellers arrived where his body
lay; they saw the dirams spread before him, and these verses written in
the sand:--"Were he possessed of all the gold of Jafier (a famous gold
refiner), a man without food could not satisfy his appetite. To a
wretched mendicant, parched in the desert, a boiled turnip would relish
better than an ingot of virgin silver."


XIX

I had never complained of the vicissitudes of fortune, nor murmured at
the ordinances of heaven, excepting on one occasion, that my feet were
bare, and I had not wherewithal to shoe them. In this desponding state I
entered the metropolitan mosque at Cufah, and there I beheld a man that
had no feet. I offered up praise and thanksgiving for God's goodness to
myself, and submitted with patience to my want of shoes.--In the eye of
one satiated with meat a roast fowl is less esteemed at his table than a
salad; but to him who is stinted of food a boiled turnip will relish
like a roast fowl.