ALI BABA ;
oF,
THE FORTY THIEVES.

 

In a town of Persia there lived two brothers, the sons of a
poor man ; the one was named Cassim, and the other Ali Baba.
Cassim, the elder, married a wife with a considerable fortune,
and lived at his ease, in a handsome house, with plenty of ser-
vants ; but the wife of Ali Baba was as poor as himself; they
dwelt in a mean cottage in the suburbs of the city, and he main-

 

tained his family by cutting wood in a neighbouring forest.
One day when Ali Baba was in the forest, preparing to load
his asses with the wood he had cut, he saw a troop of horsemen
approaching towards him. He had often heard of robbers who
infested that forest, and, in a great fright, he hastily climbed 4
large thick tree, which stood near the foot of a rock and hid
himself among the branches. The horsemen soon galloped up