THE STORY OF ALADDIN, OR THE WONDERFUL LAMP
NOTE.—The Arabian Nights' Entertainment, from which Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor are taken, is a celebrated collection of Eastern tales. It is supposed that the Arabians got them from the people of India, who in their turn are supposed to have received them from Persia. They were introduced into Europe in a French translation about the beginning of the eighteenth century, and have always been very popular, not only on account of the interest of the stories, but because they give excellent pictures of life and customs in the East. In certain Mohammedan lands to-day people tell and believe stories of genii which are quite as extraordinary as some of those contained in the Arabian Nights.
The tales, although they are separate stories, are fancifully connected as follows:
A certain sultan, Schahriar, having found that his wife was unfaithful to him, had her put to death and vowed that each day thereafter he would marry a new wife, who should be put to death on the following morning. At length Scheherazade, a daughter of the vizier, determined to try by a clever device to stop the sultan's cruelty. By her own request she became the wife of the sultan, but in the morning, before he had a chance to order her beheaded, she began to tell him a most interesting story. In the middle of this tale she broke off, and the sultan was so curious as to what was to follow, that he declared she should live until the following day. Each day the sultaness practiced the same device, and each day the sultan's curiosity got the better of his cruelty, so that he allowed her to live on. For a thousand and one nights she kept up her story telling, and by the end of that time, the sultan had fallen so in love with his wife that he declared she should live. Thus by her heroism and her accomplishments she prevented the death of many girls, who might have become victims of the sultan's cruel vow.
In one of the great, rich cities of China, there once lived a poor tailor named Mustapha. Although his family consisted only of his wife and a son, he could scarcely by the hardest labor support them.
Aladdin, the son, was an idle fellow, careless and disobedient. Every morning early he would go out into the streets, and there he would stay all day, playing in the public places with other shiftless children of his own age.
When he was old enough to learn a trade, his father took him into his own shop and taught him how to use a needle, but no sooner was the father's back turned than Aladdin was gone for the day. Mustapha punished him again and again, but everything failed to keep Aladdin off the street, and finally his father was compelled to abandon him to his evil ways. The poor old tailor felt his son's disobedience so keenly that he fell sick, and in a few months died of sorrow.
Aladdin, no longer restrained by the fear of his father, was never out of the streets by day, and gave himself up wholly to idleness and play till he was fifteen years old.
At about that time, as he was one day playing with some rough boys in the street, a stranger who was passing stopped and eyed the boy keenly. Though the stranger looked like any other man, he was in reality an African magician, who had but recently arrived in the Chinese city. Aladdin was an attractive boy, and because of his habits the sorcerer felt that the boy was well suited to his purposes. Accordingly, after talking with the other boys and learning Aladdin's history, he called the youngster away from his playmates.
"Child," he asked, "was not your father called Mustapha the tailor?"