And the advice is excellent, but, as is again said:
But comfort first each function requireth."
And "wisdom to a hungry stomach is thin pottage," saith the shrewd reader of men. Little comfort was there with Shibli Bagarag, as he looked on the city of Shagpat the clothier! He cried aloud that his evil chance had got the better of him, and rolled his body in the sand, beating his breast, and conjuring up images of the profusion of dainties and the abundance of provision in Shiraz, exclaiming, "Well-a-way and woe's me! this it is to be selected for the diversion of him that plotteth against man." Truly is it written:
One bears them firm, another faints,
While this one hangs them like a drum
Whereon to batter loud complaints."
And of the three kinds, they who bang the drum outnumber the silent ones as do the billows of the sea the ships that swim, or the grains of sand the trees that grow; a noisy multitude.
Now he was in the pits of despondency, even as one that yieldeth without further struggle to the waves of tempest at midnight, when he was ware of one standing over him,—a woman, old, wrinkled, a very crone, with but room for the drawing of a thread between her nose and her chin; she was, as is cited of them who betray the doings of Time,
"Wrinkled at the rind, and overripe at the core,"
