"There Will Not Be Much Trouble For The Valuer When He
Arrives," I Remarked To The Monks, "If You Allow Such Wholesale Robbery
Of Your Orchards."
"On the contrary," they replied, "the difficulty will be increased; we
never sell the produce of the gardens, which is kept for the support of
all those who visit us, but we have much trouble with the valuation of
the fruits for taxation.
It is hard that we shall have to pay for what
the public consume at our expense, but it will be thus arranged. . . .
The valuer will arrive, and he will find some trees laden with unripe
fruit, others that have been stripped by plunder; the potatoes, &c.,
will be still in the ground. We shall have a person to represent our
interests in the valuation as a check upon the official; but in the end
he will have his own way. We shall explain that certain trees are naked,
as the fruit became ripe and was stolen by the boys. 'Then you ought to
have taken more care of it,' he will reply; `how many okes of plums were
there upon those trees?' We shall have to guess the amount. `Nonsense!'
he will exclaim to whatever figure we may mention, 'there must have been
double that quantity: I shall write down 1500 (if we declared 1000),
which will split the difference.' ("Splitting the difference" is the
usual method of arranging an Oriental dispute, as instanced by Solomon's
well-known suggestion of dividing the baby.).
"We shall protest," continued the monks, "and this kind of inquisitorial
haggling will take place concerning every tree, until the valuer shall
have concluded his labour, and about one-third more than the actual
produce of the orchards will have been booked against us; upon which we
must pay a tax of 10 per cent., at the same time that the risks of
insects, rats, and the expenses of gathering remain to the debit of the
garden.
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