Little Poems in Prose

with any sense of charity or with any greed for the visible goods of life was doomed to find himself one day terribly embarrassed by his millions. So, too, a love of beauty and poetic power were given to the son of a dirty rascal, a quar- ryman by trade, who could not in any manner assist the development of the gifts, or supply the needs of his unlucky offspring. I forgot to tell you that the distribution in these solemn cases is without appeal, and that no one may refuse a gift. All the Fairies rose, thinking that their spell of hard labour was at an end, for there re- mained no more presents, no more bounties to throw among all this human trash, when a brave fellow, a poor little tradesman I think, rose, and catching her by her robe of many- coloured smoke the Fairy who was nearest to him, cried, “Ah, dear Lady, you are forgetting us, there is still my little child; I should be sorry to have come here for nothing.” The Fairy might have been embarrassed, for there remained no longer anything at all; how- ever; she remembered in time a law very well known, though rarely applied in the supernatu- ral world inhabited by these impalpable deities, friendly to man, and often constrained to yield to his passions, such as the Fairies, the