'What do you want?' said the Cogia from above. 'Come down,'
said the man, who was a beggar. The Cogia forthwith came down and said,
'What do you want?' 'I want your charity,' said the man. 'Come
upstairs,' said the Cogia. When the beggar had come up, the Cogia said,
'God help you.' 'O master,' said the other, 'why did you not say so
below?' Said the Cogia, 'When I was above stairs, why did you bring me
down.'
Once upon a time the wife of the Cogia was in labour; one day, two days,
she sat upon the chair but could not bring forth; the women who attended
her cried from the interior apartment to the Cogia: 'O master, do you
know no prayer by means of which the child may be brought into the
world?' 'I know a specific,' said the Cogia, and forthwith running to a
grocer's shop he procured some walnuts, and bringing them he said, 'Make
way,' and going into the room he spread the walnuts under the chair, and
said: 'Now that the child sees the walnuts he will come out to play with
them.'
One day the Cogia's wife, in order to plague the Cogia, boiled some broth
exceedingly hot, brought it into the room and placed it on the table. The
wife then, forgetting that it was hot, took a spoon and put some into her
mouth, and, scalding herself, began to shed tears. 'O wife,' said the
Cogia, 'what is the matter with you; is the broth hot?' 'Dear Efendi,'
said the wife, 'my mother, who is now dead, loved broth very much; I
thought of that, and wept on her account.
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