10 STORIES OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS 



she repeated. " The Butcher-boy knows a song 

 that goes something like that, only I am not very 

 sure of the words. Is it near Wonderland, 

 where Alice met the mad March Hare and the 

 Cheshire Cat? Or by Fairyland, where Riquet 

 with the Tuft and the Sleeping Beauty lived? 

 Perhaps it is the North Country, where the 

 Storks build their nests on the chimney stones, 

 and the poor little Tin Soldier floated down the 

 gutter, and the Street Lamp was so sad?" 



" No, Tommy-Anne ; the people in Whyland 

 are real people, though their speech is so strange 

 to the House People that they think it fairy talk. 

 Whyland covers the whole earth ; and though I am 

 a ruler in it, yet there are different interpreters to 

 teach its languages, for no one may learn them all. 



" You are a thoughtful child (the heedless can 

 never learn even one of these languages), so you 

 may learn the speech of the nearest corner and 

 the ways of its people, and see them through the 

 Magic Spectacles, that give both sight and hear- 

 ing to those who wear them." 



"Magic Spectacles?" 



" Yes, surely ; for no one can more than peep 

 into Whyland without them, and then it seems a 

 dreary place all facts and figures like the mul- 

 tiplication table. 



