for the magician, and the little fire, and the necromancy, that will
make the earth shake. All the dates imported come from the same tree
as that unlucky date with whose shell the merchant knocked out the
eye of the genie’s invisible son. All olives are of the stock of that
fresh fruit concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard
the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive merchant;
all apples are akin to the apple purchased (with two others) from the
Sultan’s gardener for three sequins, and which the tall black slave
stole from the child. All dogs are associated with the dog, really
a transformed man, who jumped upon the baker’s counter, and put his
paw on the piece of bad money. All rice recalls the rice which the
awful lady, who was a ghoul, would only peck by grains, because of
her nightly feasts in the burial-place. My very rocking-horse--there
he is, with his nostrils turned completely inside-out, indicative of
Blood!--should have a peg in his neck, by virtue thereof to fly away
with me, as the wooden horse did with the Prince of Persia, in the
sight of all his father’s court.
Yes, on every object that I recognize among those upper branches
of my Christmas tree, I see this fairy light! When I wake in bed,
at daybreak, on the cold, dark, winter mornings, the white snow
dimly beheld, outside, through the frost on the window-pane, I hear
Dinarzade: “Sister, sister, if you are yet awake, I pray you finish the
history of the Young King of the Black Islands.” Scheherazade replies:
“If my lord the Sultan will suffer me to live another day, sister, I
will not only finish that, but tell you a more wonderful story yet.”
Then, the gracious sultan goes out, giving no orders for the execution,
and we all three breathe again.
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and
otherwise left unbalanced.
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.