ndow and cried: "O vous, qui
savez de si jolis contes, et qui les racontez si bien, racontez nous en
un!"_

_You can also read them in Scott's edition or in Lane's (both of which,
but chiefly the former, we have used as the foundation of our text),
while your elders--philologists or Orientalists--are studying the
complete versions of John Payne or Sir Richard Burton. You may leave the
wiseacres to wonder which were told in China or India, Arabia or Persia,
and whether the first manuscript dates back to 1450 or earlier._

_We, like many other editors, have shortened the stories here and there,
omitting some of the tedious repetitions that crept in from time to time
when Arabian story-tellers were adding to the text to suit their
purposes._

_Mr. Andrew Lang says amusingly that he has left out of his special
versions "all the pieces that are suitable only for Arabs and old
gentlemen," and we have done the same; but we have taken no undue
liberties. We have removed no genies nor magicians, however terrible;
have cut out no base deed of Vizier nor noble deed of Sultan; have
diminished the size of no roc's egg, nor omitted any single allusion to
the great and only Haroun Al-raschid, Caliph of Bagdad, Commander of the
Faithful, who must have been a great inspirer of good stories._

_Enter into this "treasure house of pleasant things," then, and make
yourself at home in the golden palaces, the gem-studded caves, the
bewildering gardens. Sit by its mysterious fountains, hear the plash of
its gleaming cascades, unearth its magic lamps and talismans, behold its
ensorcelled princes and princesses._

_Nowhere in the whole realm of literature will you find such a Marvel,
such a Wonder, such a Nonesuch of a book; nowhere will you find
impossibilities so real and so convincing; nowhere but in what Henley
calls:_

_"... that blessed brief
Of what is gallantest and best
In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance.
The Book of rocs,
Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris,
Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and Calenders,
And ghouls, and genies--O so huge
They might have overed the tall Minster Tower,
Hands down, as schoolboys take a post;
In truth the Book of Camaralzaman,
Schemselnihar and Sinbad, Scheherezade
The peerless, Bedreddin, Badroulbadour,
Cairo and Serendib and Candahar,
And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk--
Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spel