most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat. And this fairy-tale
sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole
world. I felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond, but
as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the
terrible crystal I can remember a shudder. I was afraid that God would
drop the cosmos with a crash.

Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be
perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do
not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was
the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on
_not doing something_ which you could at any moment do and which, very
often, it was not obvious why you should not do. Now, the point here is
that to _me_ this did not seem unjust. If the miller's third son said to
the fairy, "Explain why I must not stand on my head in the fairy
palace," the other might fairly reply, "Well, if it comes to that,
explain the fairy palace." If Cinderella says, "How is it that I must
leave the ball at twelve?" her godmother might answer, "How is it that
you are going there till twelve?" If I leave a man in my will ten
talking elephants and a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain if the
conditions partake of the slight eccentricity of the gift. He must not
look a winged horse in the mouth. And it seemed to me that existence was
itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not
understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand
the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture. The
veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as
the sun, as elusive as the waters, as fantastic and terrible as the
towering trees.

For this reason (we may call it the fairy godmother philosophy) I never