"What do you want?" the
blockhead answers dutifully. "Are you mad?" roared the priest. "Are you
mad?" returned the rustic. "Here," said the priest to his attendants,
"take and beat him well;" and notwithstanding that he carefully repeated
the words again, taken and thoroughly well thrashed he was, after which
he crawled back to his wife and said, "What a wonderful woman you are!
You manage to repeat the five precepts every day, and are strong and
healthy, while I, who have only said them once, am nearly dead with
fever from the bruises."[7]
To this last may be added a story in the _Katha Manjari_, a
Canarese collection, of the stupid fellow and the _Ramayana_, one
of the two great Hindu epics: One day a man was reading the
_Ramayana_ in the bazaar, and a woman, thinking her husband might
be instructed by hearing it, sent him there. He went, and stood leaning
on his crook--for he was a shepherd--when presently a practical joker,
seeing his simplicity, jumped upon his shoulders, and he stood with the
man on his back until the discourse was concluded. When he reached home,
his wife asked him how he liked the _Ramayana_. "Alas!" said he,
"it was not easy; it was a man's load."
* * * * *
The race of Gothamites is indeed found everywhere--in popular tales, if
not in actual life; and their sayings and doings are not less diverting
when husband and wife are well mated, as in the following story:
An Arab observing one morning that his house was ready to tumble about
his ears from decay, and being without the means of repairing it, went
with a long face to his wife, and informed her of his trouble.
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