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Contoso County Council Meetings
and my wife will take it and offer it to me tremblingly with tears in
her eyes, but I shall look in the other direction. This will cause her
to weep still more, and she will hold out the glass crying, "Adorable
husband, never shall I cease my prayers till you have done me the favour
to drink." Sick of her importunities, these words will goad me to fury.
I shall dart an angry look at her and give her a sharp blow on the
cheek, at the same time giving her a kick so violent that she will
stagger across the room and fall on to the sofa.
Heading One
"My brother," pursued the barber, "was so much absorbed in his dreams
that he actually did give a kick with his foot, which unluckily hit the
basket of glass. It fell into the street and was instantly broken into a
thousand pieces."
His neighbour the tailor, who had been listening to his visions,
broke into a loud fit of laughter as he saw this sight.
Heading Two
"Wretched man!" he cried, "you ought to die of shame at behaving so
to a young wife who has done nothing to you. You must be a brute for her
tears and prayers not to touch your heart. If I were the grand-vizir I
would order you a hundred blows from a bullock whip, and would have you
led round the town accompanied by a herald who should proclaim your
crimes."
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The accident,
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so
fatal to all his profits,
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had restored my brother to his senses,
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and seeing that the mischief had been caused by his own insufferable
pride,
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he
rent his clothes and tore his hair,
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and lamented himself so loudly that the passers-by stopped to
listen.
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It
was a Friday,
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so
these were more numerous than usual.
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Some pitied Alnaschar, others only laughed at him, but the vanity
which had gone to his head had disappeared with his basket of glass, and
he was loudly bewailing his folly when a lady, evidently a person of
consideration, rode by on a mule. She stopped and inquired what was the
matter, and why the man wept. They told her that he was a poor man who
had laid out all his money on this basket of glass, which was now
broken. On hearing the cause of these loud wails the lady turned to her
attendant and said to him, "Give him whatever you have got with you."
The man obeyed, and placed in my brother's hands a purse containing five
hundred pieces of gold. Alnaschar almost died of joy on receiving it. He
blessed the lady a thousand times, and, shutting up his shop where he
had no longer anything to do, he returned home.
Heading Three
He was still absorbed in contemplating his good fortune, when a knock
came to his door, and on opening it he found an old woman standing
outside.
Continued
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