ss it is so:
all things are possible to the King of Spirits, which mortal mind can
barely comprehend."

The marriage ceremony was now ordered to take place; and one festivity
followed another; happiness, and joy, and peace, reigned together.

Jalaladdeen ruled for many years over the kingdom of the Moguls, and
enlarged it by many prosperous conquests; he brought it to a state of
peace and tranquillity which it had never experienced in former years,
and which, after his death, it did not long enjoy.

[Illustration]

The Story of Haschem.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I.

THE LOST SON.

More than a thousand years ago, there lived in the famous city of
Bagdad a man called Naima, who, although he was now grey with age, had
still the lusty strength of earlier days. The opening of his life was
devoted to trade; and in pursuit of it he made many journeys, by which
he not only gained great intellectual treasures and experiences, but
also acquired property, which afforded him, not certainly the means
for extravagant expenditure, but still sufficient to live in comfort.
He had the good sense and wisdom to be satisfied with such moderate
possessions, and to enjoy them in peaceful quiet--labouring meanwhile
for the improvement of his only son. Many of his acquaintance,
however, sought to amass greater wealth, forgetting, as it would seem,
that by such constant efforts, life itself, after its meridian, would
be but lost without some new and higher enjoyment. The city of Mossul
was his home in early days; but he quitted it, and took up his abode
in Bagdad, partly owing to the suggestions of a friend with whom he
had been on the most intimate and confidential terms from his
youth--partly, too, for the sake of the education of his son, as he
expected that a residence in that city would produce worthy and
lasting impressions on the mind of the young man.

Bagdad was, at this time, under the rule of the famed Caliph Haroun al
Raschid, and was the resort of strangers from all parts of the globe,
where artists and sages of that country mingled among those of the
neighbouring lands. Nor had Naima conceived a vain expectation. His
son Haschem was a young man gifted with good natural abilities, and
endowed with a pure unsullied heart. He used every opportunity which
chance threw in his way to extend his knowledge, cultivate his mind,
or to improve his disposition; nor was he deficient in bodily
exercises and warlike accomplish