But with the--the yen, you could buy something else you wanted,"
suggested Everychild.

"Not so. By that time I coveted some ivory chessmen, worth many yen.
And I was very happy, planning how some day I should become rich enough
to buy the ivory chessmen."

"But if you only kept on wishing for things," murmured Everychild, "and
never got them, you'd of course become very unhappy some day!"

But Aladdin slowly shook his head. "I cannot tell how it may be," he
said. "But my poor mother was always happy, and she never really got
what she wished for, unless it was the last thing of all."

"And that?" inquired Everychild.

"One thing led to another, in her case; and the last thing she wished
for was heaven. And then she died."

A great wind roared through the forest and died away in a sigh.

Presently Aladdin spoke again: "And another great trouble about getting
what you wish for is that in most cases when you get a thing you find
that you didn't really want it, after all. It proves to be not quite
what you thought it; or else it came too late."

This statement was completed in so mournful a tone that Everychild felt
constrained to say, "Why shouldn't you throw the lamp away, if it makes
you unhappy?"

"It isn't possible," was Aladdin's rejoinder. "There is only one way
in which I can be rid of it, and I haven't been able to find that way
as yet."

Everychild was so greatly puzzled by this statement that Aladdin
explained: "I can never be rid of the lamp save on one condition. When
I have wished for _the best thing of all_ the lamp will disappear and I
may rejoice in the thought that it will never be mine again."

"The best thing of all?" mused Everychild.

"You see how difficult it is. Who can tell what is the best thing of
all? And so I must go on owning the lamp and being unhappy."

But Everychild found much of this simply bewildering. "Just the same,"
he said after a pause, "it must be very nice to have a lamp to rub, so
that you may have so many things you really want."

He immediately regretted having said this; for Aladdin took up his
lamp. "Very well," he said, placing the lamp in Everychild's hands.
And there was a malicious gleam in his slanting eyes as he added,
"Suppose you make a wish. But I charge you!--think twice before you
wish."

Everychild could not take back his words; and besides, he was tempted.
He touched the lamp with trembling fingers. He rubbed it, hoping that
Aladdin