Muezzins, who call the faithful to prayer at the prescribed hours from the minarets of the mosques, are generally blind men, as a man with his eyesight might spy into the domestic privacy of the citizens, who sleep on the flat roofs of their houses in the hot season, and are selected for their sweetness of voice.  Saadi, however, tells us of a man who performed gratuitously the office of muezzin, and had such a voice as disgusted all who heard it.  The intendant of the mosque, a good, humane man, being unwilling to offend him, said one day:  “My friend, this mosque has muezzins of long standing, each of whom has a monthly stipend of ten dinars.  Now I will give you ten dinars to go to another place.”  The man agreed to this and went away.  Some time after he came to the intendant and said:  “O, my lord, you injured me in sending me away from this station for ten dinars; for where I went they will give me twenty dinars to remove to another place, to which I have not consented.”  The intendant laughed, and said:  “Take care—­don’t accept of the offer, for they may be willing to give you fifty.”

To those who have “music in their souls,” and are “moved by concord of sweet sounds,” the tones of a harsh voice are excruciating; and if among our statesmen and other public speakers “silver tongues” are rare, they are much more so among our preachers.  The Church of Rome does not admit into the priesthood men who have any bodily shortcoming or defect; it would also be well if all candidates for holy orders in the English and Scottish Churches whose voices are not at least tolerable were rejected, as unfit to preach!  Saadi seems to have had a great horror of braying orators, and relates a number of anecdotes about them, such as this:  A preacher who had a detestable voice, but thought he had a very sweet one, bawled out to no purpose.  You would say the croaking of the crow in the desert was the burden of his song, and that this verse of the Kuran was intended for him, “Verily the most detestable of sounds is the braying of an ass.”  When this ass of a preacher brayed, it made Persepolis tremble.  The people of the town, on account of the respectability of his office, submitted to the calamity, and did not think it advisable to molest him, until one of the neighbouring preachers, who was secretly ill-disposed towards him, came once to see him, and said:  “I have had a dream—­may it prove good!” “What did you dream?” “I thought you had a sweet voice, and that the people were enjoying tranquility from your discourse.”  The preacher, after reflecting a little, replied:  “What a happy dream is this that you have had, which has discovered to me my defect, in that I have an unpleasant voice, and that the people are distressed at my preaching.  I am resolved that in future I will read only in a low tone.  The company of friends was disadvantageous to me, because they look on my bad manners as excellent:  my defects appear to them skill and perfection, and my thorn as the rose and the jasmin.”