h's aid is ever near at hand."
The tale of Ghanim bin Ayyub also ends happily. Then follows the
interminable history of the lecherous and bellicose King Omar. Very
striking is its opening episode--the meeting of Prince Sharrkan with the
lovely Abrizah. "Though a lady like the moon at fullest, with ringleted
hair and forehead sheeny white, and eyes wondrous wide and black and
bright, and temple locks like the scorpion's tail," she was a mighty
wrestler, and threw her admirer three times. The tender episode of
the adventures of the two forlorn royal children in Jerusalem is
unforgettable; while the inner story of Aziz and Azizah, with the
touching account of Azizah's death, takes perhaps the highest place in
the Nights. The tale of King Omar, however, has too much fighting, just
as that of Ali bin Bakkar and Shams al Nahar, the amourist martyrs, as
Burton calls them, has too much philandering. Then comes the Tale of
Kamar al Zaman I--about the Prince and the Princess whose beauty set the
fairy and the jinni disputing. How winning were the two wives of Kamar
al Zaman in their youth; how revolting after! The interpolated tale of
Ni'amah and Naomi is tender and pretty, and as the Arabs say, sweet as
bees' honey. [447] All of us as we go through life occasionally blunder
like Ni'amah into the wrong room--knowing not what is written for us "in
the Secret Purpose." The most interesting feature of the "leprosy tale"
of Ala-al-Din is the clairvoyance exhibited by Zubaydah, who perceived
that even so large a sum as ten thousand dinars would be forthcoming--a
feature which links it with the concluding story of the Nights--that of
Ma'aruf the cobbler; while the important part that the disguised Caliph
Haroun Al-Rashid, Ja'afar and Masrur play in it reminds us of the story
of the Three Ladies of Baghdad. On this occasion, however, there was
a fourth masker, that hoary sinner and cynical humorist the poet Abu
Nowas.

One of the most curious features of the Nights is the promptitude with
which everyone--porters, fishermen, ladies, caliphs--recites poetry. It
is as if a cabman when you have paid him your fare were to give you a
quatrain from FitzGerald's rendering of Omar Khayyam, or a cripple when
soliciting your charity should quote Swinburne's Atalanta. Then in the
midst of all this culture, kindliness, generosity, kingliness, honest
mirth,--just as we are beginning to honour and love the great caliph, we
come upon a tale [448] with