Page:Ali Baba, or, The forty thieves (1).pdf/3



the 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 he maintained his family by cutting wood in a neighbouring forest.

One day when Ali Baba was in the forest and preparing to load his asses with the wood he had cut, he saw a troop of horsemen approaching toward him. He had often heard of robbers who infested that forest, and, in great fright, he hastily climbed