Rabbi Ishmael, sou of Rabbi Yossi, had a gardener who regularly brought him a basket of grapes every Friday. Bringing it once on a Thursday, the Rabbi asked him the reason why he had come a day earlier. " My lord," said the gardener, " having a lawsuit to come off before thee to-day, I thought by so doing I might save myself the journey to-morrow." Upon this the Rabbi both refused to take the basket of grapes, though they were really his own, and declined to act as judge in the process.
He, however, appointed two Rabbis to judge the case in his stead, and while they were investigating the evidence in the litigation he kept pacing up and down, and saying to himself, if the gardener were sharp he might say so-and-so in his own behalf. He was at one time on the point of speaking in defense of his gardener, when he checked himself and said, " The receivers of bribes may well look to their souls.
If I feel partial who have not even taken a bribe of what was my own, how perverted must the disposition of those become who receive bribes at the hands of others!"