“Dear Ianthe, your Gift is Beauty?” “It is.”  “And mine is Riches,” said Euphrosyne.  “All the pleasures of life shall be at my Godchild’s feet,” said another Fairy, laughing.  “If that will not ensure happiness, I know not what will.”  Ambrosia held back—­“Your choice, dear Sister?” asked Euphrosyne.

“Come! we have no time to lose.”

“It must remain a secret,” was the reply.  “Our discourse yesterday evening was so thoughtful, so sad, I could not sleep.  I arose hours before you this morning, ere daylight streaked the sky.  Dear Sisters, how shocked you will be to hear I wept; but now I have determined.  If my gift succeed I will tell you all about it, or you shall guess it yourselves; for I now propose that our Fairy Gifts this year shall be a sort of experiment on human happiness.  Let us from time to time visit in company our young charges, and let the result—­that is, which of our Gifts is proved to confer the greatest amount of happiness, be written in the archives of our kingdom for the future benefit of the mortal race.”

A murmur of approbation rose, sweet as the vibration of a harp-chord through the assembly.

There was no time for enquiry about the other gifts:  the travelling Fairies arose and beat their gauzy wings upon the western breeze.  A melodious rushing was just audible; the distant murmurs of the earthly sea the most resemble that sweet dream of sound.  In a few moments the departing sisters became invisible, and those who remained returned to float by the sea shore, or make sweet music in the bowers of their enchanted land.

* * * * *

Time is a very odd sort of thing, dear readers.  We neither know whence it comes nor whither it goes;—­nay we know nothing about it in fact except that there is one little moment of it called the present, which we have as it were in our hands to make use of—­but beyond this we can give no account of, even that little moment.  It is ours to use, but not to understand.  There is one thing in the world, however, quite as wonderful, and quite as common, and that is, the Wind.  Did it never strike you how strange it was that the strongest thing in the world should be invisible?  The nice breezes we feel in summer and the roughest blasts we feel in winter in England are not so extremely strong you will say:  but I am speaking, besides these, of the winds called hurricanes that arise in the West Indian Islands, and in other places in the world.  These dreadful hurricanes have at times done as much mischief as earthquakes and lightning.  They tear down the strongest trees, overthrow the firmest houses and spread ruin and desolation around, and yet this terrible power, so tremendous, and against which the cleverest contrivances can provide no defence, is as invisible as the great Maker of Heaven and Earth.  How unbelieving many people would look if you told them of a dreadful creature that was coming to the world, which could