I assure you it is a sensible grief to me to beĭeprived of the comforts I expected. I have been a great many years abroad traveling, and now I am come home with the hopes of seeing him, you tell me he is dead. Aladdin, who observed his tears, asked him, What made him weep? Alas! my son, cried the African magician with a sigh, how can I forbear? I am your uncle your good father was my own brother. Whether the African magician, who was a good physiognomist, had observed in Aladdin’s countenance something which was absolutely necessary for the execution of the design he came about, he inquired artfully about his family, who he was, and what were his inclinations and when he had learned all he desired to know, he went up to him, and taking him aside from his comrades, said to him, Child, was not your father called Mustapha the tailor? -Yes, sir, answered Aladdin, but he has been dead a long time.Īt these words, the African magician threw his arms about Aladdin’s neck, and kissed him several times with tears in his eyes. This stranger was a famous magician, called by the writer of this story the African Magician and by that name I shall call him with the more propriety, as he was a native of Africa, and had been but two days come from thence. In this situation, as he was one day playing according to custom, in the street, with his vagabond troop, a stranger passing by stood still to observe him. This course he followed till he was fifteen years old, without giving his mind to any thing whatever, or the best reflection on what would become of him. The mother of Aladdin, finding that her son would not follow his father’s business, shut up the shop, sold all the implements of that trade, and with the money that she got for them, and what she could get by spinning cotton, thought to maintain herself and her son.Īladdin, who was now no longer restrained by the fear of a father, and who cared so little for his mother, that whenever she chid him he would fly in her face, gave himself entirely over to dissipation, and was never out of the streets from his companions. Mustapha chastised him, but Aladdin was incorrigible and his father, to his great grief, was forced to abandon him to his libertinism and was so much troubled at not being able to reclaim him, that it threw him into a fit of sickness, of which he died in a few months. All that his father could do to keep him at home to mind his work was in vain for no sooner was his back turned, but Aladdin was gone for that day. When he was old enough to learn a trade, his father, not being able to put him out to any other, took him into his own shop, and shewed him how to use his needle: but neither good words nor the fear of chastisement were capable of fixing his lively genius. He was wicked, obstinate, and disobedient to his father and mother, who, when he grew up, could not keep him within doors but he would go out early in the morning, and stay out all day, playing in the streets and public places with little vagabonds of his own age. His son, who was called Aladdin, had been brought up after a very careless and idle manner, and by that means had contracted many vicious habits. I n the capital of one of the large and rich provinces of the kingdom of China, the name of which I do not recollect, there lived a tailor whose name was Mustapha, without any other distinction but that which his profession afforded him, and so poor, that he could hardly, by his daily labour, maintain himself and family, which consisted of a wife and son.
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