coachman out of nowhere, but she received a command—­which might have come out of Brixton—­that she should be back by twelve.  Also, she had a glass slipper; and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in folk-lore.  This princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones.  For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat.  And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world.  I felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the terrible crystal I can remember a shudder.  I was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash.

Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable.  Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years.  Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on not doing something which you could at any moment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do.  Now, the point here is that to me this did not seem unjust.  If the miller’s third son said to the fairy, “Explain why I must not stand on my head in the fairy palace,” the other might fairly reply, “Well, if it comes to that, explain the fairy palace.”  If Cinderella says, “How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?” her godmother might answer, “How is it that you are going there till twelve?” If I leave a man in my will ten talking elephants and a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain if the conditions partake of the slight eccentricity of the gift.  He must not look a winged horse in the mouth.  And it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited.  The frame was no stranger than the picture.  The veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as fantastic and terrible as the towering trees.

For this reason (we may call it the fairy godmother philosophy) I never could join the young men of my time in feeling what they called the general sentiment of revolt.  I should have resisted, let us hope, any rules that were evil, and with these and their definition I shall deal in another chapter.  But I did not feel disposed to resist any rule merely because it was mysterious.  Estates are sometimes held by foolish forms, the breaking of a stick or the payment of a peppercorn:  I was willing to hold the huge estate of earth and heaven by any such feudal fantasy.  It could not well be wilder