Know that I was sitting one day at the window, when lo! there passed by a man, singing the following distich,
Umm Amr, [FN#169] thy boons Allah repay! * Give back my heart bet where it may!
And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.
When it was the Four Hundred and Third Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the schoolmaster continued, When I heard the man humming these words as he passed along the street, I said to myself Except this Umm Amru were without equal in the world, the poets had not celebrated her in ode and canzon. So I fell in love with her; but, two days after, the same man passed, singing the following couplet,
Ass and Umm Amr went their way; * Nor she, nor ass returned for aye.
Thereupon I knew she was dead and mourned for her. This was three days ago, and I have been mourning ever since. So I left him, (concluded the learned one) and fared forth, having assured myself of the weakness of the gerund-grinders wit. And they tell another and a similar tale of THE FOOLISH DOMINIE [FN#170]
Once upon a time, a schoolmaster was visited by a man of letters who entered a school and, sitting down by the hosts side, entered into discourse with him and found him an accomplished theologian, poet, grammarian, philologist and poet; intelligent, well bred and pleasant spoken; whereat he wondered, saying in himself,
