Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The following tales, which are now published, were translated by me whilst I was engaged in the study of Eastern languages. They have lain in my desk for several years, and I should never have ventured to bring them to the light, had I not been strongly urged to do so by those who had read the manuscript.<br><br>Wishing to give the English reader some idea of the novel style of these Eastern tales, I have, especially in the principal story, purposely retained many peculiarities which may make the language sound somewhat un-English. I must, therefore, claim the indulgence of the public for any faults of style they may notice, considering the difficulty I had to content with in translating from languages so different from our own, especially as I wished not to completely denationalize the tales, but to preserve, to a certain extent, the strange mixture of rugged simplicity and gorgeous extravagance of the original.
