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HAROUN, THE LONELY MAN OF SHIRAZ. 
(A Persian Tale.) 
Haroun Azsounim was an honest hard-working basket-maker of the 
renowned city of Shiraz, one of the most splendid cities of Persia; but 
though early as the bee, and industrious as the ant, honest Haroun was 
as poor asia pilgrim, and not half so patient. Wandering in one of his 
daily fits of discontent by a pleasant stream which winds about that 
city, he fell into the usual rumination on the poverty of his estate. 
« Why,” exclaimed he, “should I toil for ever, day and night and night 
and day, and yet want food and comfort, while there are those idle ones 
in Shiraz, who think it too laborious to pour out a precious liquor into 
a golden cup for themselves, and who, having all that they want, enjoy 
nothing that they have? The lazy lord of yonder stately palace of 
ahundred towers, glutted with the gifts of fortune, and crammed with 
the daintiest good things of life, lolls from morn till night on carpets of 
the richest weavings of the Persian loom, and is fattened with flattery 
and the finest fowls, and surrounded by a hundred women, the fairest 
of Circassia, whom he neither loves nor delights, but whose business it 
is to strive to delight him, though they cannot love him. He is fat with 
the choicest foods, and so pursy, that he cannot rise from his cross- 
legged squat without the help of two of his stoutest eunuchs, nor sit 
down again with less help; whilst I am so thin, that two men might 
hardly hold me down to earth in a high wind. A hundred slaves, more 
pliant to his purposes than the lithest willows which I twist into baskets, 
wait on the watch to prevent a single want, whilst I have a thousand 
wants which no one will even notice, much more prevent. They pour 
on his beard the fragrant oils of Ataghan, whilst mine is only moistened 
with my melancholy tears, They waft cool perfumes around his 
chambers, as if the wholesome air of heaven was not sweet enough for 
his most delicate nostrils. They steep him in baths whose waters are 
made voluptuous with essences drawn from the roses of Cashmeer, and 
the lilies of Teflis, and as he reclines in the bath the voices of singers 
please his ear with the soft songs of Mirza; whilst I am compelled 
to perform my sacred ablutions in the common river, with no other 
singing but the nightingale’s, and no richer perfume than that which the 
roses on either bank fling liberally to the open air: these are sweet 
enough, truly, but though they are of the world I have not the world to 
thank for them. These several things serve to prove what I have long 
suspected,” finished the discontented Haroun, “‘and what indeed our 
greatest philosopher, the divine Sadi, the light of the world, asserted to . 
his believing disciples, that though whatever is was to be, yet nothing is 
as it should be.” 
It was the hour of sunrise, and that once-worshipped god of the 
Persians was then lifting his glorious forehead over the heights of the 
city ; and from every minaret the Mussulman’s bell of prayer called on 
all true believers to rise to their orisons. Haroun heard not the call, but 
he knew the hour, and quieting the murmurs of his mind for a moment, 
he turned eastward, and prostrating himself on his face, worshipped 
in silence and seriousness the new god—the one god—of whom 
Mahomet was the prophet. His prayers performed, he arose from the 
green earth, and forgot in devouter thoughts the discontented axiom 
M.M. New Series.—Vot. II. No. 8. - Z, 
