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more or less, or to circumvent their masters in one way or another, and some of them had a quite amazing amount of freedom, if they were rich and widowed, or powerful in their connections.
Of course very little was known of the outside world, and so all sorts of things were imagined about it. Valleys strewn with diamonds, islands where queer people and queerer animals were found, fantastic birds and serpents, giants, dwarfs and what not, lay in wait for the bold traveler who left Bagdad and set out to see for himself. It was a highly colored life, and it lost nothing in the tales men told of it.
Only a very few of the stories are contained in this book, but they are among the most famous. You will find the English a little quaint, not just what is used to tell a story today, but not enough so to be a bother. As you read you must fancy that it is Scheherazade who is speaking, in her low and musical voice, while her slave girl lies at her feet and the sultan sits beside her on the rich couch with its Eastern hangings. Remember that she is telling each story to save her life, and the lives of the many maidens who would follow her to death if she should fail to hold the interest of her husband. She breaks off as day comes, and always she tries to do this at a point that will make him anxious to hear more. It is she who invented the continued story. Through the tall, narrow windows, with their arched tops, veiled with silken curtains, the sun at length pierces, and
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