moment, is a very pleasant and most delightful place, and one
which all of us, young and old, may well desire to get into,
even if we have to come back from it sooner than we like. It is
just the country to suit everybody, for all of us can find in it
whatever pleases him best. If he likes work, there is plenty of
adventure; he can climb up mountains of steel, or travel over
seas of glass, or engage in single combat with a giant, or dive
down into the caves of the little red dwarfs and bring up their
hidden treasures, or mount a horse that goes more swiftly than
the wind, or go off on a long journey to find the water of youth
and life, or do anything else that happens to be very dangerous
and troublesome. If he doesn't like work, it is again just the
place to suit idle people, because it is all Midsummer holidays.
I never heard of a school in Fairy Land, nor of masters with
canes or birch rods, nor of impositions and long lessons to be
learned when one gets home in the evening. Then the weather is
so delightful. It is perpetual sunshine, so that you may lie out
in the fields all day without catching cold; and yet it is not
too hot, the sunshine being a sort of twilight, in which you see
everything, quite clearly, but softly, and with beautiful
colours, as if you were in a delightful dream.

And this goes on night and day, or at least what we call night,
for they don't burn gas there, or candles, or anything of that
kind; so that there is no regular going to bed and getting up;
you just lie down anywhere when you want to rest, and when you
have rested, you wake up again, and go on with your travels.
There is one capital thing about Fairy Land. There are no
doctors there; not one in the whole country. Consequently nobody
is ill, and there are no pills or powders, or brimstone and