"
Dinner over, the younger went back to the field, and looked for his
spade, but could not find it; so he ran to his brother and
_whispered_ mysteriously in his ear, "My spade is stolen!"--The
passion for collecting antique relics is thus ridiculed: A man who was
fond of old curiosities, though he knew not the true from the false,
expended all his wealth in purchasing mere imitations of the
lightning-stick of Tchew-Koung, a glazed cup of the time of the Emperor
Cheun, and the mat of Confucius; and being reduced to beggary, he
carried these spurious relics about with him, and said to the people in
the streets, "Sirs, I pray you, give me some coins struck by Tai-Koung."
* * * * *
Indian fiction abounds in stories of simpletons, and probably the oldest
extant drolleries of the Gothamite type are found in the _Jatakas_,
or Buddhist Birth-stories. Assuredly they were own brothers to our mad
men of Gotham, the Indian villagers who, being pestered by mosquitoes
when at work in the forest, bravely resolved, according to _Jataka_
44, to take their bows and arrows and other weapons and make war upon
the troublesome insects until they had shot dead or cut in pieces every
one; but in trying to shoot the mosquitoes they only shot, struck, and
injured one another. And nothing more foolish is recorded of the
Schildburgers than Somadeva relates, in his _Katha Sarit Sagara_,
of the simpletons who cut down the palm-trees: Being required to furnish
the king with a certain quantity of dates, and perceiving that it was
very easy to gather the dates of a palm which had fallen down of itself,
they set to work and cut down all the date-palms in their village, and
having gathered from them their whole crop of dates, they raised them up
and planted them again, thinking they would grow.
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