Moollâh Adeenah, the story-teller to his majesty, of whom I shall have occasion to speak hereafter, told me, that he considered it as much as his head was worth to tell a tale twice without variations to the king of kings. "Besides my own invention," said he, "I have a great book, containing anecdotes on all subjects, and an infinite quantity of amusing matter, which I select at pleasure, and adapt my story to the circumstances of the moment, and to the characters of those who form my audience." There are no tales in Persia that undergo more changes than those which relate to divorces. The different sects of Mahomedans hold different doctrines on this head, and the story-teller must not offend any of his auditors. Besides, there is often a fear of personal allusions, which compels him to remove his characters from one country to another, to keep them out of harm's way; as my Uncle Toby advised Trim to do with his giants, in that best of all good stories, "The King of Bohemia and his seven Castles." I have heard a celebrated story of a merchant called Hajee Sâlah Kej-Khoolk, the cross-grained, told in four or five different ways, and particularly that incident in his life relating to his having, in one of those bursts of passion to which he was liable, divorced, for the third time, a beautiful young female of high rank, whose parents this old, ugly, ill-humoured, wealthy man, had bribed, by settling a large dowry upon her. According to the edition of this tale, which will serve as a specimen of those grounded on divorces, the old Hajee was at the town of Nishâpoor in Khorassan, when in a violent fit of rage he pronounced the last divorce upon the lady, whose name was Maidee. She immediately left his house and went to her parents. They, though moved at first by the tears with which she implored them to assist her in resisting all proposals for a re-union with a husband whom she abhorred, soon gave way to the worldly motives which induced them to desire her return to a person who was continually making them presents, and who was now more generous than ever, in the hope of inducing them to promote his interests with one of whom, notwithstanding his conduct, he was distractedly fond. Maidee seeing no other opportunity of escape from the continued importunities to which she was exposed, listened to the proposals made through the old nurse, of a youth of the name of Omar, who, though poor, was of a respectable family, and whose sister was one of the wives of the governor of the town. This sister had seen Maidee at the public bath, and it was the account which she gave of her surprising beauty and great dower that determined Omar to try every means to make her his wife.