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,

and every part of her nodded and shook like a tree sapped by the waters,
and her joints were sharp as the hind-legs of a grasshopper; she was
indeed one close-wrecked upon the rocks of Time.

Now, when the old woman had scanned Shibli Bagarag, she called to him,
'O thou! what is it with thee, that thou rollest as one reft of his wits?'

He answered her, 'I bewail my condition, which is beggary, and the lack
of that which filleth with pleasantness.'

So the old woman said, 'Tell me thy case.'

He answered her, 'O old woman, surely it was written at my birth that I
should take ruin from the readers of planets. Now, they proclaimed that
I was one day destined for great things, if I stood by my tackle, I, a
barber. Know then, that I have had many offers and bribes, seductive
ones, from the rich and the exalted in rank; and I heeded them not,