Page:Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp.djvu/97

 ALAEDDIN AND THE ENCHANTED LAMP.

There was [once] in a city of the cities of China a man, a tailor and poor, and he had a son by name Alaeddin, who was perverse and graceless from his earliest childhood. When he came to ten years of age, his father would fain have taught him his own craft, for that, because he was poor, he could not spend money upon him to have him taught [another] trade or art or the like; so he carried him to his shop, that he might teach him his craft of tailoring; but, forasmuch as the lad was perverse and wont still to play with the boys of the quarter, he would not sit one day in the shop; nay, he would watch his