Page:Ali Baba, or, The forty thieves, destroyed by Morgiana, a female slave.pdf/3



N a town of Persia there lived two brothers, the sons of a poor man; the one was named Cassim, and the other Ali Baba.

Cassim, the elder, married a wife with a considerable fortune, and lived at his ease in a handsome house with plenty of servants; but the wife of Ali Baba was as poor as himself; they dwelt in a mean cottage in the suburbs of the city, and maintained his family by cutting wood in a forest nigh Bagdad, the city in which he resided.

One day he went to the forest, as usual, with his son, and having laden his son's asses, and despatched him to the city, was preparing to load his own with the wood he had cut, when he heard the sound of a horn, and, immediately after, the neighing of horses. Upon looking more attentively he discovered a troop of horsemen, galloping towards the place where he stood.