It is related that a handsome and studious young man once lived in a certain city, where every branch of knowledge was freely taught. He had a great desire to be for ever learning something fresh, that his life might lack no happiness. One day a traveling merchant told him that there existed, in a far country, a sage who was the holiest man of Islam and who, though wiser than the sum of all others at that time, practiced the simple trade of a blacksmith, as his father and grandfather had done before him. Straightaway the young man took his sandals, his foodbag, and his stick, and journeyed towards that far country, hoping that he might learn a little of the blacksmith’s wisdom. After forty days and forty nights of danger and fatigue, he came to the city which he sought, and was directed to the smith’s shop. He kissed the hem of the saint’s robe and then stood before him in silence. “What do you desire, my son?” asked the smith, who was an old man with a benign face. “Learning,” answered the youth. Without a word the smith put the cord of the bellows into his hand and bade him pull it. The new disciple pulled the cord of the bellows until sunset. On the morrow he did the same thing. For weeks, for months, and finally for a whole year, he worked the bellows, without receiving a word from the master or the many disciples who were engaged in various kinds of the like hard and simple toil. Five years passed before the young man dared open his lips, and say: “Master!” The smith paused in his work and the other disciples ceased their occupations to look on anxiously. The master turned to the young man in the silence of the forge, and asked: “What do you wish?” “Learning,” answered the youth. As he turned back to the fire, the smith said: “Pull the cord.” Another five years passed, during which the disciple pulled the cord of the bellows from morning till night, without rest and without having a word addressed to him. When the ten years were over, the old smith approached the young man and touched him on the shoulder. Then the youth left hold of the cord for the first time in ten years, and a great joy descended upon him. “My son,” said the master, “you may now return to your own country, knowing that you carry the whole learning of the world about with you. You have acquired patience.”

From The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol. III, London and New York: Routledge, 1964, pp. 437-438.