“Lord, sir, it is meat and drink to me!” he said once when questioned about it. He was advised to give it up. “I couldn’t do it,” was his reply. “Beside—what would be the good? It’s in me, all over me, in every fibre. I know it from one cover to the other.” “Then why not part with it—if so familiar?” “Why don’t you part with your wife because you know her face and voice and thoughts? I couldn’t do it. I love the book because so familiar to me—every tale, every word.” One day a note from the Hall told the rector that the squiress had got a real treat for Haroun. She was going to give him as a Christmas present “Tales of the Genii.” The rector laid down his daily paper, took his hat and stick, and pushed down to the Hall at once. “My dear lady! I implore you, do nothing of the kind. Give him a book on practical carpentering or a dictionary of gardening. But another book of Jinns and necromancers will turn poor Haroun mad altogether.” Now and then, on a Sunday evening, the rector would say to his wife, “Look here, Rosie, I could read Haroun’s mind to-day as he sat under the pulpit, as though it were a book in large primer type, open before me. He was very attentive when I began my sermon, and he followed me some way, but by degrees his eye became vacant, abstracted, his expression of face altered, and I knew that he was away with the Three Calenders, hearing why Zobeide whipped the hounds.” “Harry,” responded the rectoress, “you have only yourself to blame. Try to be more interesting when you preach.” “My dear Rosie,” exclaimed the parson, “I do my level best, but what pulpit discourse could ever compete with ‘Sindbad’s Voyages’ or ‘The Hunchback’?” The good lady sighed and said, “Whatever will Haroun do for a wife? We have no Fatimas and Zobeides in this village.” “I wish with all my heart that Haroun would weave his own web of romance, fall in love, and—then he’d forget the ‘Arabian Nights.’” “In time this infatuation will wear off.” “I doubt it. This has now been going on for years, and that book only works its way deeper into his soul. Upon my word, Rosie, I believe the Bible interests him only because of the wonders that are in it.” “Then, my dear, I am sure you judge him wrong. He is a good man, and God-fearing.” “Yes—but oh! so fantastical.” Aaron Price did not keep his treasury of stories bottled up in his own breast. He was great at retailing them, but he transferred the scenery to Wales, translated Camaralzaman and Badoura into David Jones and Sheena Williams, located every incident in some well-known spot, and thoroughly bewildered his hearers, who could not make out whether he were poking fun at them or narrating facts.