Page:Fairy Tales Their Origin and Meaning.djvu/16

make for ourselves in a moment, is a very pleasant and most delightful place, and one which all of us, young and old, may well desire to get into, even if we have to come back from it sooner than we like. It is just the country to suit everybody, for all of us can find in it whatever pleases him best. If he likes work, there is plenty of adventure; he can climb up mountains of steel, or travel over seas of glass, or engage in single combat with a giant, or dive down into the caves of the little red dwarfs and bring up their hidden treasures, or mount a horse that goes more swiftly than the wind, or go off on a long journey to find the water of youth and life, or do anything else that happens to be very dangerous and troublesome. If he doesn't like work, it is again just the place to suit idle people, because it is all Midsummer holidays. I never heard of a school in Fairy Land, nor of masters with canes or birch rods, nor of impositions and long lessons to be learned when one gets home in the evening. Then the weather is so delightful. It is perpetual sunshine, so that you may lie out in the fields all day without catching cold; and yet it is not too hot, the sunshine being a sort of twilight, in