And in this circuitous way you see I have reached my present subject, which is, Ogres.  You fancy they are dead or only fictitious characters—­mythical representatives of strength, cruelty, stupidity, and lust for blood?  Though they had seven-leagued boots, you remember all sorts of little whipping-snapping Tom Thumbs used to elude and outrun them.  They were so stupid that they gave into the most shallow ambuscades and artifices:  witness that well-known ogre, who, because Jack cut open the hasty-pudding, instantly ripped open his own stupid waistcoat and interior.  They were cruel, brutal, disgusting, with their sharpened teeth, immense knives, and roaring voices! but they always ended by being overcome by little Tom Thumbkins, or some other smart little champion.

Yes; they were conquered in the end there is no doubt.  They plunged headlong (and uttering the most frightful bad language) into some pit where Jack came with his smart couteau de chasse and whipped their brutal heads off.  They would be going to devour maidens,

“But ever when it seemed
Their need was at the sorest,
A knight, in armor bright,
Came riding through the forest.”

And down, after a combat, would go the brutal persecutor, with a lance through his midriff.  Yes, I say, this is very true and well.  But you remember that round the ogre’s cave the ground was covered, for hundreds and hundreds of yards, with the bones of the victims whom he had lured into the castle.  Many knights and maids came to him and perished under his knife and teeth.  Were dragons the same as ogres? monsters dwelling in caverns, whence they rushed, attired in plate armor, wielding pikes and torches, and destroying stray passengers who passed by their lair?  Monsters, brutes, rapacious tyrants, ruffians, as they were, doubtless they ended by being overcome.  But, before they were destroyed, they did a deal of mischief.  The bones round their caves were countless.  They had sent many brave souls to Hades, before their own fled, howling out of their rascal carcasses, to the same place of gloom.

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that fairies, champions, distressed damsels, and by consequence ogres, have ceased to exist.  It may not be OGREABLE to them (pardon the horrible pleasantry, but as I am writing in the solitude of my chamber, I am grinding my teeth—­yelling, roaring, and cursing—­brandishing my scissors and paper-cutter, and as it were, have become an ogre).  I say there is no greater mistake than to suppose that ogres have ceased to exist.  We all know ogres.  Their caverns are round us, and about us.  There are the castles of several ogres within a mile of the spot where I write.  I think some of them suspect I am an ogre myself.  I am not:  but I know they are.  I visit them.  I don’t mean to say that they take a cold roast prince out of the cupboard, and have a cannibal feast