Welcome to The Arabian Nights Entertainments! This is the first of 16 parts that make up Andrew Lang’s The Arabian Nights Entertainments. In this series, you’ll hear some familiar stories, some new stories, and even stories within stories. 

Our stories today are The Arabian Nights, The Story of the Merchant and the Genie, The Story of the First Old Man and the Hind, and The Story of the Second Old Man, and of the Two Dogs. Here we begin with Scheherazade and  stories within a story. You’ll soon discover that genies are not always kind and helpful!
 

“The Finish of Patsy Barnes” tells the story of the titular character, a poor young African-American boy, who enters a horse race in order to earn the money he needs to pay for his sick mother's treatment.

A young prince is left in charge of his step-father’s prize prisoner and decides to release him. Deciding not to wait for his inevitably painful death, the prince runs away. As he travels, he spares the lives of a wood-pigeon, a duck, and a stork, then meets up and travels with two former soldiers. Their ultimate betrayal leaves the prince fearing for his life; will his earlier kindness save his own life? 

"The Catbird Seat" is a 1942 short story by James Thurber. The story first appeared in The New Yorker on November 14, 1942. The story was also published in the 1945 anthology The Thurber Carnival.