story; for was so hot and thirsty, and longed so to be clean for
once, that he tumbled himself as quick as he could into the clear
cool stream.

And he had not been in it two minutes before he fell fast asleep,
into the quietest, sunniest, cosiest sleep that ever he had in his
life; and he dreamt about the green meadows by which he had walked
that morning, and the tall elm-trees, and the sleeping cows; and
after that he dreamt of nothing at all.

The reason of his falling into such a delightful sleep is very
simple; and yet hardly any one has found it out. It was merely
that the fairies took him.

Some people think that there are no fairies. Cousin Cramchild
tells little folks so in his Conversations. Well, perhaps there
are none--in Boston, U.S., where he was raised. There are only a
clumsy lot of spirits there, who can't make people hear without
thumping on the table: but they get their living thereby, and I
suppose that is all they want. And Aunt Agitate, in her Arguments
on political economy, says there are none. Well, perhaps there are
none--in her political economy. But it is a wide world, my little
man--and thank Heaven for it, for else, between crinolines and
theories, some of us would get squashed--and plenty of room in it
for fairies, without people seeing them; unless, of course, they
look in the right place. The most wonderful and the strongest
things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can
see. There is life in you; and it is the life in you which makes
you grow, and move, and think: and yet you can't see it. And
there is steam in a steam-engine; and that is what makes it move: