WHAT DHE sINDIANS SAY 127 
to do what they asked. So one night, when all the 
other sunbeams had flown back to him, he sent these 
foolish ones to sleep on the earth (which had never 
happened to them before), and there they lay all night 
—some in the flower-cups, some under the leaves of 
the trees—without giving any light at all, for when a 
sunbeam 7s asleep it can give no light. But in the 
morning, when their brother and sister sunbeams flew 
back to earth, they woke up, but’ the two did not 
know each other again, for the foolish sunbeams were 
not sunbeams any more—not real ones, that is to say. 
They flew about, still, in the forests, and glanced 
through the trees, and hovered over the flowers, in 
almost the same way as they had done before; but 
now they had a shape and wings, and they sipped 
the nectar out of the flower-cups, which was a thing 
that they had never even dreamed about. They 
were Humming-birds, and though their feathers were 
as bright as hey had ever been, and though they had 
all of them long Latin names and a scientific descrip- 
tion in books, still it was not quite the same, for it 
would take a lot of Latin and a lot of scientific 
description, to make up for not being a sunbeam. 
But when the Indians came to know of the occur- 
rence, they called them “living sunbeams,” and it is 
easy to understand what they meant. And now you 
know (until you are a clever person) how Humming- 
