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They showed him all the wonders of the wood under the tree-stumps, the bushes, the dry leaves little wood-sprites with rustling little voices, with spider-webby hair, straight ones and hunchbacked ones; little old men of the wood; the shadow-sprites and little companion spirits; bantering little sprites in green coats, midnight ones and daylight ones, grey ones and black ones; little jokers-pokers with shaggy little paws; fabulous birds and animals everything that is not to be seen in the gloomy, everyday, earthly world.
We could have a day on the river, or I could take you to see well, anything you liked we should be free and happy. Think of it, Hadria! to be rid of this incessant need for caution, for hypocrisy. We have but one life to live; why not live it?" "Why not live it, why not live it?" The words danced in her head, like circles of little sprites carrying alluring wreaths of roses.
Some of the little songs fixed themselves in her memory, and she would hum them as she wandered up and down the beach. "Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands; Courtsied when you have and kissed The wild waves whist, Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear." And another which pleased her still more:
The heart of the idyll comes in a song of the clarinet against strange, murmuring strings, ever with a soft answer of the lower reed. New invading sprites do not hem the flight of the melody. But at the height a redoubled pace turns the mood back to revelling mirth with broken bits of the horn tune.
Like a mouse who, lost in wonder, Flicks its whiskers at the thunder! For, while sprites and yearning were decidedly his own, the interpretation of them, if not their actual origin, seemed another's. This other, like some dear ideal on the way to realisation, had taken him prisoner.
Not a mighty wraith nor spook of Arabian fancy, but a very small girl, or child, with very black hair, very white skin and very dark, beautiful eyes. A daughter of mixed ancestry, yet with her dainty hands and little feet, she seemed descended from sprites or sylphs. "Monsieur called," she said in her pretty dialect. "Yes, my dear.
Thus it was that Bar Shalmon found a troupe of beautiful fairies in the garden the next evening. They tried their utmost to induce him to return with them, but he would not listen. Every day different messengers came big, ugly demons who threatened, pretty fairies who tried to coax him, and troublesome sprites and goblins who only annoyed him.
'Every flower to others given, Blossoms fair and sweet in heaven. The fourth was a picture of a curly-haired child sewing, with some very large tears rolling down her cheeks and tumbling off her lap like marbles, while some tiny sprites were catching and flying away with them as if they were very precious
The sober, enlightened age protested against the old folk-tales with goblins, gnomes, elves, and other kindred sprites, but, to make up for it, thousands of living caricatures played in their own rooms the part of goblins and gnomes, and lady shepherdesses appropriated the roles of the elves, nixies, and nymphs.
He who can extract pleasurable emotions from the alembic of such a day has a trick of alchemy with which I am wholly unacquainted. Hark! a rap at my door. Welcome anybody just now. One gains nothing by attempting to shut out the sprites of the weather.
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