Note 6 — INTRODUCTION.

For example: before one story (1) is ended another (2) is begun, and before it is finished another (3), springing out of the second, is commenced; then out of story 3 springs yet another story (4), which ended, number 3 is resumed and brought to an end, then number 2, after which number 1 is resumed and concluded; and then the thread of the leading story—which runs throughout the whole work, like a brook through a meadow, but often out of sight—is taken up once more;—to lead presently to a fresh complication of stories, which “beget one another to the end of the chapter!” The arrangement of the Tales in the Arabian Nights is on this plan; though not to be compared for elaboration with that of the Indian Fables, above-mentioned, still less so with the frame of Kathá Sarit Ságara.