like clay; they chuckle with delight every time a Kazi or a
Fakir--a judge or a reverend--is scurvily entreated by some
Pantagruelist of the Wilderness; and, despite their normal
solemnity and impassibility, all roar with laughter, sometimes
rolling upon the ground till the reader's gravity is sorely
tried, at the tales of the garrulous Barber and of Ali and the
Kurdish Sharper. To this magnetising mood the sole exception is
when a Badawi of superior accomplishments, who sometimes says his
prayers, ejaculates a startling "Astagh-faru'llah"--I pray
Allah's pardon!--for listening, not to Carlyle's "downright
lies," but to light mention of the sex whose name is never heard
amongst the nobility of the Desert.

Nor was it only in Arabia that the immortal Nights did me such
notable service: I found the wildlings of Somali land equally
amenable to its discipline; no one was deaf to the charm and the
two women cooks of my caravan, on its way to Harar, were in
continently dubbed by my men "Shahrazad" and "Dinazad."

It may be permitted me also to note that this translation is a
natural outcome of my Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah.
Arriving at Aden in the (so called) winter of 1852, I put up with
my old and dear friend, Steinhaeuser, to whose memory this volume
is inscribed; and, when talking over Arabia and the Arabs, we at
once came to the same conclusion that, while the name of this
wondrous treasury of Moslem folk lore is familiar to almost every
English child, no general reader is aware of the valuables it
contains, nor indeed will the door open to any but Arabists.
Before parting we agreed to "collaborate" and produce a full,
complete, unvarnished, uncastrated copy of the great original, my