Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 3 (of 6) Part 1
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Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 3 (of 6) Part 1
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
Aladdin jumped into the cave, went down the steps, and found the three
halls just as the African magician had described them. He went through
them with all the precaution the fear of death could inspire, if he
failed to observe all that he was told very carefully; crossed the
garden without stopping, took down the lamp from the niche, threw out
the wick and the liquor, and, as the magician told him, put it in his
bosom. But as he came down from the terrace, seeing it was perfectly
dry, he stopped in the garden, to observe the fruit, which he only had a
glimpse of in crossing it. All the trees were loaded with extraordinary
fruit, of different colours on each tree: some bore fruit entirely
white, and some clear and transparent as crystal; some pale red, and
others deeper; some green, blue, and purple, and others yellow; in
short, there was fruit of all colours. The white were pearls; the clear
and transparent, diamonds; the deep red, rubies; the paler, ballas
rubies; the green, emeralds; the blue, turquoises; the purple,
amethysts; and those that were of yellow cast, sapphires; and so of the
rest. All these fruits were so large and beautiful, that nothing was
ever seen like them. Aladdin was altogether ignorant of their value; and
would have preferred figs and grapes, or any other fruits, before them;
and though he took them only for coloured glass of little value, yet he
was so pleased with the variety of the colours, and the beauty and
extraordinary size of the fruit, that he had a mind to gather some of
every sort; and accordingly filled his two pockets, and the two new
purses his uncle had bought for him with the clothes which he gave him;
and as he could not put them in his pockets, he fastened them to his
girdle. Some he wrapped up in the skirts of his gown, which was of silk,
large and wrapping, and crammed his breast as full as it could hold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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