But if some maid with beauty blest, As pure and fair as Heaven can make her. Will share my labor and my rest Till envious Death shall overtake her? Quoth Echo (sotto voce),--"Take her!" THE STORY OF ALADDIN, OR THE WONDERFUL LAMP NOTE.--The Arabian Nights' Entertainment, from which Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor are taken, is a celebrated collection of Eastern tales. It is supposed that the Arabians got them from the people of India, who in their turn are supposed to have received them from Persia. They were introduced into Europe in a French translation about the beginning of the eighteenth century, and have always been very popular, not only on account of the interest of the stories, but because they give excellent pictures of life and customs in the East. In certain Mohammedan lands to-day people tell and believe stories of genii which are quite as extraordinary as some of those contained in the Arabian Nights. The tales, although they are separate stories, are fancifully connected as follows: A certain sultan, Schahriar, having found that his wife was unfaithful to him, had her put to death and vowed that each day thereafter he would marry a new wife, who should be put to death on the following morning. At length Scheherazade, a daughter of the vizier, determined to try by a clever device to stop the sultan's cruelty. By her own request she became the wife of the sultan, but in the morning, before he had a chance to order her beheaded, she began to tell him a most interesting story. In the middle of this tale she broke off, and the sultan was so curious as to what was to follow, that he declared she should live until the following day. Each day the sultaness practiced the same device, and each day the sultan's curiosity got the better of his cruelty, so that he allowed her to live on. For a thousand and one nights she kept up her story telling, and by the end of that time, the sultan had fallen so in love with his wife that he declared she should live. Thus by her heroism and her accomplishments she prevented the death of many girls, who might have become victims of the sultan's cruel vow. In one of the great, rich cities of China, there once lived a poor tailor named Mustapha. Although his family consisted only of his wife and a son, he could scarcely by the hardest labor support them. Aladdin, the son, was an idle fellow, careless and disobedient. Every morning early he would go out into the streets, and there he would stay all day, playing in the public places with other shiftless children of his own age.