“I am going, Ellie!” said Tom.  “I am going, if it is to the world’s end.  But I don’t like going at all, and that’s the truth.”

“Pooh! pooh! pooh!” said the fairy.  “You will like it very well indeed, you little rogue, and you know that at the bottom of your heart.  But if you don’t I will make you like it.  Come here, and see what happens to people who do only what is pleasant.”

And she took out of one of her cupboards (she had all sorts of mysterious cupboards in the cracks of the rocks) the most wonderful water-proof book, full of such photographs as never were seen.  For she had found out photography (and this is a fact) more than 13,598,000 years before anybody was born; and what is more, her photographs did not merely represent light and shade, as ours do, but colour also.  And therefore her photographs were very curious and famous, and the children looked with great delight at the opening of the book.

And on the title-page was written, “The History of the great and famous nation of the Doasyoulikes, who came away from the country of Hardwork, because they wanted to play on the Jew’s-harp all day long.”

In the first picture they saw these Doasyoulikes living in the land of Readymade, at the foot of the Happy-go-lucky Mountains, where flapdoodle [Footnote:  Flapdoodle is the food on which fools are supposed to be fed.] grows wild; and if you want to know what that is, you must read Peter Simple. [Footnote:  Peter Simple is a novel by Captain Marryat.]

They were very fond of music, but it was too much trouble to learn the piano or the violin; and as for dancing, that would have been too great an exertion.  So they sat on ant-hills all day long, and played on the Jew’s-harp; and if the ants bit them, why they just got up and went to the next anthill, till they were bitten there likewise.

And they sat under the flapdoodle trees, and let the flapdoodle drop into their mouths; and under the vines, and squeezed the grape juice down their throats; and if any little pigs ran about ready roasted, crying, “Come and eat me,” as was their fashion in that country, they waited till the pigs ran against their mouths, and then took a bite, and were content, just as so many oysters would have been.

They needed no weapons, for no enemies ever came near their land; and no tools, for everything was ready-made to their hand; and the stern old fairy Necessity never came near them to hunt them up, and make them use their wits, or die.

“Well, that is a jolly life,” said Tom.

“You think so?” said the fairy.  “Do you see that great peaked mountain there behind, with smoke coming out of its top?”

“Yes.”

“And do you see all those ashes, and slag, and cinders lying about?”

“Yes.”

“Then turn over the next five hundred years, and you will see what happens next.”

And behold, the mountain had blown up like a barrel of gunpowder, and then boiled over like a kettle; whereupon one-third of the Doasyoulikes were blown into the air, and another third were smothered in ashes; so that there was only one-third left.