fairy-tale books. I think I saw a difference, from the first,
between the old poetic legends and a modern lie, especially if
this latter was the invention of a fancy as youthful as my own.

I supposed that the beings of those imaginative tales had lived
some time, somewhere; perhaps they still existed in foreign
countries, which were all a realm of fancy to me. I was certain
that they could not inhabit our matter-of-fact neighborhood. I
had never heard that any fairies or elves came over with the
Pilgrims in the Mayflower. But a little red-haired playmate with
whom I became intimate used to take me off with her into the
fields, where, sitting, on the edge of a disused cartway fringed
with pussy-clover, she poured into my ears the most remarkable
narratives of acquaintances she had made with people who lived
under the ground close by us, in my fatber's orchard. Her literal
descriptions quite deceived me; I swallowed her stories entire,
just as people in the last century did Defoe's account of "The
Apparition of Mrs. Veal."

She said that these subterranean people kept house, and that they
invited her down to play with their children on Wednesday and
Saturday afternoons; also that they sometimes left a plate of
cakes and tarts for her at their door: she offered to show me the
very spot where it was,--under a great apple-tree which my
brothers called "the luncheon-tree," because we used to rest and
refresh ourselves there, when we helped my father weed his
vegetable-garden. But she guarded herself by informing me that it
would be impossible for us to open the door ourselves; that it
could only be unfastened from the inside. She told me these
people's names--a "Mr. Pelican," and a "Mr. Apple-tree Manasseh,"