gas what seemed to me a colossal shrouded statue, made of a black
bronze, formless, silent, awful. I crept back to my bed, and there
shivered in an ecstasy of fear, till at last I fell asleep. There
was no statue there in the morning! I told my old nurse, after a day
or two of dumb dread, what I had seen. She laughed, and told me that
a certain Mrs. Holder, an elderly widow who was a dressmaker, had
been to see her, about some piece of work. They had turned out the
nursery lights and were going downstairs, when some question arose
about the stuff of the frock, whatever it was. Mrs. Holder had
mounted on a chair to look close at the stuff by the gaslight; and
this was my bogey!

We had a delightful custom in nursery days, devised by my mother,
that on festival occasions, such as birthdays or at Christmas, our
presents were given us in the evening by a fairy called
Abracadabra.

The first time the fairy appeared, we heard, after tea, in the
hall, the hoarse notes of a horn. We rushed out in amazement. Down
in the hall, talking to an aunt of mine who was staying in the
house, stood a veritable fairy, in a scarlet dress, carrying a wand
and a scarlet bag, and wearing a high pointed scarlet hat, of the
shape of an extinguisher. My aunt called us down; and we saw that
the fairy had the face of a great ape, dark-brown, spectacled, of a
good-natured aspect, with a broad grin, and a curious crop of white
hair, hanging down behind and on each side. Unfortunately my eldest
brother, a very clever and imaginative child, was seized with a
panic so insupportable at the sight of the face, that his present
had to be given him hurriedly, and he was led away, blanched and
shuddering, to the nursery. After that, the fairy never appeared