treachery and witchcraft; but at length, knowing it was in vain to
be angry, he set himself to think on proper methods for getting a
livelihood in this strange country. Accordingly he applied himself
to some people whom he saw at work in a neighbouring wood: these
people conducted him to a town that stood at a little distance from
the wood, where, after some adventures, he married a woman of great
beauty and fortune. He lived with this woman so long that he had by
her seven sons and seven daughters. He was afterwards reduced to
great want, and forced to think of plying in the streets as a porter
for his livelihood. One day as he was walking alone by the sea-
side, being seized with many melancholy reflections upon his former
and his present state of life, which had raised a fit of devotion in
him, he threw off his clothes with a design to wash himself,
according to the custom of the Mahometans, before he said his
prayers.

After his first plunge into the sea, he no sooner raised his head
above the water but he found himself standing by the side of the
tub, with the great men of his court about him, and the holy man at
his side. He immediately upbraided his teacher for having sent him
on such a course of adventures, and betrayed him into so long a
state of misery and servitude; but was wonderfully surprised when he
heard that the state he talked of was only a dream and delusion;
that he had not stirred from the place where he then stood; and that
he had only dipped his head into the water, and immediately taken it
out again.

The Mahometan doctor took this occasion of instructing the sultan
that nothing was impossible with God; and that He, with whom a
thousand years are but as one day, can, if He pleases, make a single