THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 99 



The Fairies seemed to sense that we were 

 looking and listening and enjoying, and so they 

 frolicked with delightful abandon. They drink 

 of the dew, and bathe in it, and bask in the en- 

 ravishing moonlight and sip choice nectar from 

 the night-blossoming jassamine. There is no 

 bickering or quarrelling. 



How fully we enter into it all; we stir not, 

 nor scarcely breathe, only a hand pressure now 

 and then, to emphasize the keen relish of our 

 delight. Our pet Lionel sleeps at our feet with 

 one eye open on the fairies, he moves not nor 

 even wags his tail, or uplifts his head for his 

 coveted pat. He has caught the spirit of si- 

 lence and is as bronze. 



O you dear little Elfie fairies, we wonder not 

 that the whole child-world opens its eyes wide 

 in elated gaze and believes because it feels and 

 sees and hears. So late from heaven and fresh 

 in spirit and near to nature's heart, what visions 

 of exceeding grace they see, what symphonies 

 they hear and what teachers of our dullness 

 they become by their purer instincts. What a 

 dull and cheerless and pulseless world this 

 would be 'without childhood. Children and 

 birds and flowers reminded the Master of 

 heaven more than aught else. It is the poetic 

 spirit that interprets the fairy life, possibly 



