He was fitted up so neatly, With dewdrops for his crown, And he footed it so featly He never shook them down. The maids began advancing, along a lily stem, Not to stop the monarch’s dancing, but to make him look at them. The king could not afford them The proper time to gaze, But sweetly bowed toward them, At the turn of every maze: Till full of pretty faces, and his sandals getting worn, He was puzzled in his paces, and fell upon a thorn. The maidens broke the magic ring, And leaped the cummer dart; ’Alas, our little Pixie king, The thorn is in his heart!’ They laid him in a molehill, and piteously they cried: Yet this was not the whole ill, for all the maidens died. Each took a spindled acorn, found Below a squirrel’s nest, And set the butt against the ground, The barb beneath her breast: So truly she addressed the stroke unto her loving part, That when the acorn grew an oak, it held her little heart.’ By no means a "little heart," it seemed to me, for a fairy to have owned, but as large as it was loving. I assured Mr. Dawe that he was quite untaught in fairy lore, or he never would have confounded fairies with pixies, a different class of society. But he treated my learning with utter contempt, and reasonably enough declared that he who spent all his time in the woods must know more than any books could tell. He also informed me, that the proper name for the lignified fairy heart, was a "gordit:" but he did not choose to tell me what had become of the other, which was not so large or handsome as this, yet it had saved him a month’s sawing, and earned him "a rare time," which meant, I fear, that the proceeds had been spent in a very long cruise. After refusing all compensation, Mr. Dawe made his farewell in several couplets of uncouth but hearty blessing, begging me only to shake hands with him once, and venturing as a poet to prophesy that we should meet again. The "gordit" was probably nothing more than a rare accretion, or ganglion, in the centre of an aged oak. However, it was very pretty; and of course I observed the condition upon which I had received it, valuing it moreover as a token of true friends.