Marriageable

A certain lawyer had a very ugly daughter

who was marriageable; but although he

offered a considerable dower and other valuables, no one was inclined to wed

her. Brocade and damask will appear disgusting on a bride who is ugly. In

short, through necessity, he married her to a blind man. It is said that, in

the same year there arrived from Ceylon a physician who could restore sight to

the blind. They asked the father, Why lie would not have his son-in-law cured? He

said, ‘‘ Bee: Use he was afraid that if lie should recover his sight, he would

divorce his wife. It is best that the husband of an ugly woman should be

blind.”

Conqueror of kingdoms

A certain King regarded with contempt the

society of Durweshcs; which one of them having the penetration to discover,

said, “O king in this world you have the advantages of us in external grandeur,

but with regard to the comforts of life we are your superiors : at the time of

death we shall be your equals ; and at the resurrection our state will be

preferable to yours ”

Although the conqueror of kingdoms enjoyed absolute sway at the same time that the Durwesh may be in want of bread, yet in that hour when both shall die, they will cany nothing with them but their winding-sheets. When you wish to make up your burthens for quitting this world, the state of the beggar will be preferable to that of the monarch. The Durwesh exhibits a patched garment and shaved hair, but in truth his heart is alive and his passions subdued. He is not a person that will advance his pretensions among mankind; and if men oppose his inclination, he will not engage in strife. If a mill-stone should roll down from a mountain, he has but little faith who gets out of the way of it.

The Durwcsh’s course of duty consists in invoking and praising God, in obeying and worshipping him in giving alms, in being content, in believing the unity of the Deity, and in reliance on God with patient resignation to His will. Whosoever is endowed with these qualities is a Durwesh indeed, although he be arrayed in a robe; and, on the contrary, an idle prater who neglects his prayers and is a slave to his passions, who turns day into night in sensual gratifications, and night into day in drowsy indolence, eating anything that falls in his way, and saying whatever comes uppermost, such an one is a profligate, although he wears nothing but a blanket. 0 thou, whose inward parts are void of piety and whose outside beareth the garb of hypocrisy, hang not a gorgeous curtain before the door of a house constructed of reeds.