208 The Legends of the Jews
and cried out in supplicating tones : " O good people, give me, I pray you, a little bundle of straw. My wife has been delivered of a child, and I am so poor I haven't even enough straw to make a bed for her." Now Akiba could console his wife with the fact that their own misery was not so great as it might have been, and thus Elijah had attained his end, to sustain the courage of the pious." f In the form of an Arab, he once appeared before a very poor man, whose piety equalled his poverty. He gave him two shekels. These two coins brought him such good fortune that he attained great wealth. But in his zeal to gather worldly treasures, he had no time for deeds of piety and charity. Elijah again appeared before him and took away the two shekels. In a short time the man was as poor as before. A third time Elijah came to him. He was crying bitterly and complaining of his misfortune, and the prophet said : " I shall make thee rich once more, if thou wilt promise me under oath thou wilt not let wealth ruin thy character." He promised, the two shekels were restored to him, he regained his wealth, and he remained in posses- sion of it for all time, because his piety was not curtailed by his riches.™
Poverty was not the only form of distress Elijah relieved. He exercised the functions of a physician upon Rabbi Shimi bar Ashi, who had swallowed a noxious reptile. Elijah ap- peared to him as an awe-inspiring horseman, and forced him to apply the preventives against the disease to be expected in these circumstances.
He also cured Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi of long-continued toothache by laying his hand on the sufferer, and at the same
