III

THE LUXURY OF READING IN BED

Last night, having written what you have just read about the benefits of fairy literature, I bethought me to renew my acquaintance with some of those tales which so often have delighted and solaced me.  So I piled at least twenty chosen volumes on the table at the head of my bed, and I daresay it was nigh daylight when I fell asleep.  I began my entertainment with several pages from Keightley’s ``Fairy Mythology,’’ and followed it up with random bits from Crofton Croker’s ``Traditions of the South of Ireland,’’ Mrs. Carey’s ``Legends of the French Provinces,’’ Andrew Lang’s Green, Blue and Red fairy books, Laboulaye’s ``Last Fairy Tales,’’ Hauff’s ``The Inn in the Spessart,’’ Julia Goddard’s ``Golden Weathercock,’’ Frere’s ``Eastern Fairy Legends,’’ Asbjornsen’s ``Folk Tales,’’ Susan Pindar’s ``Midsummer Fays,’’ Nisbit Bain’s ``Cossack Fairy Tales,’’ etc., etc.

I fell asleep with a copy of Villamaria’s fairy stories in my hands, and I had a delightful dream wherein, under the protection and guidance of my fairy godmother, I undertook the rescue of a beautiful princess who had been enchanted by a cruel witch and was kept in prison by the witch’s son, a hideous ogre with seven heads, whose companions were four equally hideous dragons.

This undertaking in which I was engaged involved a period of five years, but time is of precious little consideration to one when he is dreaming of exploits achieved in behalf of a beautiful princess.  My fairy godmother (she wore a mob-cap and was hunchbacked) took good care of me, and conducted me safely through all my encounters with demons, giants, dragons, witches, serpents, hippogriffins, ogres, etc.; and I had just rescued the princess and broken the spell which bound her, and we were about to ``live in peace to the end of our lives,’’ when I awoke to find it was all a dream, and that the gas-light over my bed had been blazing away during the entire period of my five-year war for the delectable maiden.

This incident gives me an opportunity to say that observation has convinced me that all good and true book-lovers practise the pleasing and improving avocation of reading in bed.  Indeed, I fully believe with Judge Methuen that no book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.  You recall, perhaps, that eloquent passage in his noble defence of the poet Archias, wherein Cicero (not Kikero) refers to his own pursuit of literary studies:  ``Haec studia adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant; secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium praebent; delectant domi, non impediunt foris; pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur!’’

By the gods! you spoke tally, friend Cicero; for it is indeed so, that these pursuits nourish our earlier and delight our later years, dignifying the minor details of life and affording a perennial refuge and solace; at home they please us and in no vocation elsewhere do they embarrass us; they are with us by night, they go with us upon our travels, and even upon our retirement into the country do they accompany us!