464 
A PERSIAN SURGEON. 
A few months’ travelling in the empire, had taught me the local 
value of this sort of trifles; trifles to us, because we can com¬ 
mand them to superabundance. 
Once, under circumstances similar to those which obliged me 
to lodge with the Moullah, I repaid the hospitalities of the sur¬ 
geon of a Persian village, where I had taken up my quarters, 
with the present of a very fine lancet. The poor man by some 
fortunate chance had possessed one, about ten years before ; 
but time having long ago rendered it incapable of use, he 
had been reduced, in consequence, to bleed with the point 
of a pen-knife of a very indifferent fabric. During my travels, 
I was in the custom of having a lancet always about me, in 
case of accidents; and when I took this out of my pocket- 
book, put it into his hand, and told him it was for himself; 
he looked at me, and at it, with his mouth open, as if he hardly 
comprehended the possibility of my parting with such a jewel. 
But when I repeated the words “ It is yours,” he threw himself 
on the ground, kissed my knees and my feet, and wept with a 
joy, that stifled his expression of thanks. And all this agitated 
gratitude was for a gift, which related more to the comfort of his 
patients, than to his own profit. For, being the only practitioner 
near the place, it must be the same to the weight of his purse, 
whether he bled with a knife or a nail. Hence, benevolence 
alone, caused his rapture. And my feelings, though not so ec¬ 
statically, were not less moved, on seeing such pure disinterest¬ 
edness in the mind of a man, where gold is too generally con¬ 
sidered all in all. 
But to return to my venerable Moullah. He carefully deposited 
his newly acquired treasure in his kalumdoon, or inkhorn; an 
attribute as essential to the dignity of a Moullah, as his daggered 
