One of the many women I ever really loved, fair in the fearless old fashion, was used to sing, in the blithe, unfettered accent of the people:  ``I’d like to be a fairy, And dance upon my toes, I’d like to be a fairy, And wear short close!’’ And in later life it is to her sex that the wee (but very wise) folk sometimes delegate their power of torment.  Such understudies are found to play the part exceeding well; and many a time the infatuated youth believes he sees in the depth of one sole pair of eyes —­ blue, brown, or green (the fairy colour) —­ the authentic fairy wicket standing ajar:  many a time must he hear the quaint old formula, ``I’m sure, if I’ve ever done anything to lead you to think,’’ etc (runs it not so?), ere he shall realise that here is the gate upon no magic pleasance but on a cheap suburban villa, banging behind the wrathful rate-collector or hurled open to speed the pallid householder to the Registrar’s Office.  In still grosser habitations, too, they lurk, do the People of Mischief, ready to frolic out on the unsuspecting one:  as in the case, which still haunts my memory, of a certain bottle of an historic Château-Yquem, hued like Venetian glass, odorous as a garden in June.  Forth from out the faint perfume of this haunted drink there danced a bevy from Old France, clad in the fashion of Louis-Quinze, peach-coloured knots of ribbon bedizening apple-green velvets, as they moved in stately wise among the roses of the old garden, to the quaint music —­ Rameau, was it? —­ of a fairy cornemuse, while fairy Watteaus, Fragonards, Lancrets, sat and painted them.  Alas! too shallow the bottle, too brief the brawls:  not to be recalled by any quantity of Green Chartreuse.

Aboard the Galley

He was cruising in the Southern Seas (was the Ulysses who told me this tale), when there bore down upon him a marvellous strange fleet, whose like he had not before seen.  For each little craft was a corpse, stiffly ``marlined,’’ or bound about with tarred rope, as mariners do use to treat plug tobacco:  also ballasted, and with a fair mast and sail stepped through his midriff.  These self-sufficing ships knew no divided authority:  no pilot ever took the helm from the captain’s hands; no mutines lay in bilboes, no passengers complained of the provisions.  In a certain island to windward (the native pilot explained) it was the practice, when a man died, to bury him for the time being in dry, desiccating sand, till a chief should pass from his people, when the waiting bodies were brought out and, caulked and rigged secumdum artem, were launched with the first fair breeze, the admiral at their head, on their voyage to the Blessed Islands.  And if a chief should die, and the sand should hold no store of corpses for his escort, this simple practical folk would solve the little difficulty by knocking some dozen or twenty stout fellows on the head, that the notable might voyage like a gentleman.  Whence this gallant little company, running before the breeze, stark, happy, and extinct, all bound for the Isles of Light!  ’Twas a sight to shame us sitters at home, who believe in those Islands, most of us, even as they, yet are content to trundle City-wards or to Margate, so long as the sorry breath is in us; and, breathless at last, to Bow or Kensal Green; without one effort, dead or alive, to reach the far-shining Hesperides.