The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE
wound up with an indigo key. With this history the
king was even more profoundly interested than with
the other -and, as the day broke before its conclusion (notwithstanding all the queen's endeavors to get
through with it in time for the bowstringing), there
was again no resource but to postpone that ceremony
as before, for twenty-four hours. The next night
there happened a similar accident with a similar
result; and then the next -and then again the next;
so that, in the end, the good monarch, having been
unavoidably deprived of all opportunity to keep his
vow during a period of no less than one thousand and
one nights, either forgets it altogether by the expiration of this time, or gets himself absolved of it in the
regular way, or (what is more probable) breaks it outright, as well as the head of his father confessor.
At all events, Scheherazade, who, being lineally
descended from Eve, fell heir perhaps to the whole
seven baskets of talk which the latter lady, we all
know, picked up from under the trees in the garden of
Eden; Scheherazade, I say, finally triumphed, and the
tariff upon beauty was repealed.
Now, this conclusion (which is that of the story as
we have it upon record) is, no doubt, excessively
proper and pleasant —but, alas! like a great many
pleasant things, is more pleasant than true; and I
am indebted altogether to the Isitsooiinot for the
means of correcting the error. " Le mieux," says a
French proverb, " est Pennemi du bien," and, in mentioning that Scheherazade had inherited the seven
baskets of talk, I should have added that she put
them out at compound interest until they amounted
to seventy-seven.
"My dear sister," said she, on the thousand-and263