“Unhappy woman!” exclaimed Ali Baba, “what have you done to ruin me and my family?”

“It was to preserve, not to ruin you,” answered Morgiana.  Then she showed the dagger in Cogia Houssain’s garment, and said:  “Look well at him, and you will see that he is both the pretended oil-merchant and the captain of the band of forty robbers.  As soon as you told me that he would eat no salt with you, I suspected who it was, and when I saw him, I knew.”

Ali Baba embraced her, and said:  “Morgiana, I gave you your liberty before, and promised you more in time; now I would make you my daughter-in-law.  Consider,” he said, turning to his son, “that by marrying Morgiana, you marry the preserver of my family and yours.”

The son was all the more ready to carry out his father’s wishes, because they were the same as his own, and within a few days he and Morgiana were married, but before this, the captain of the robbers was buried with his comrades, and so secretly was it done, that their bones were not found till many years had passed, when no one had any concern in making this strange story known.

For a whole year Ali Baba did not visit the robbers’ cave.  At the end of that time, as nobody had tried to disturb him, he made another journey to the forest, and, standing before the entrance to the cave, said:  “Open, Sesame.”  The door opened at once, and from the appearance of everything within the cavern, he judged that nobody had been there since the captain had fetched the goods for his shop.  From this time forth, he took as much of the treasure as his needs demanded.  Some years later he carried his son to the cave, and taught him the secret, which he handed down in his family, who used their good fortune wisely, and lived in great honor and splendor.

III.  RIP VAN WINKLE[*] (1819)

[* From “The Sketch Book.”  The elaborate Knickerbocker notes with which Irving, following a passing fashion of the time, sought to mystify the reader, are here omitted.  They are hindrances now rather than helps.]

BY WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859)

[Setting.  The Hudson River and the Kaatskill Mountains were first brought into literature through this story, Irving being the first American master of local color and local tradition.  Since 1870 the American short story, following the example of Irving, has been the leading agency by which the South, the West, and New England have made known and thus perpetuated their local scenery, legends, customs, and dialect.  Irving, however, seemed afraid of dialect.  There were, it is true, many legends about the Hudson before Irving was born, but they had found no expression in literature.  Mrs. Josiah Quincy, who made a voyage up the Hudson in 1786, wrote:  “Our captain had a legend for every scene, either supernatural or traditional or of actual occurrence during the war, and not a mountain reared its head unconnected with some marvellous story.”  Irving, therefore, did not have to manufacture local traditions; he only gave them wider currency and fitted them more artistically into their natural settings.