XVIII
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Sadi and Ross, James
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."