into her mouth; but with the birth of her first child she can support herself in the fairy manner. It was owing to this imperfect state of being that Mary Wellwood was resumed by her friends the first time. The second time she went back of her own accord. [Footnote 11: When a fairy marries a man she gradually loses her fairy-power and her children have none of it or only vestiges--so much as the children of a genius may perhaps exhibit. I am not able to say how long the fairy-wife's ability to resume her own nature lasts. _The Forsaken Merman_ occurs to one; but I doubt if Miranda King, at the time, say, of her son's marriage with Mabilla, could have gone back to the sea. Sometimes, as in Mrs. Ventris's case, fairy-wives play truant for a night or for a season. I have reason to believe that not uncommon. The number of fairy-wives in England alone is very considerable--over a quarter of a million, I am told.] But with regard to their love-business among themselves it is a very different matter, so far as I can understand it. The fairy child is initiated at the age of puberty and is then competent to pair. He is not long in selecting his companion; nor does she often seem to refuse him, though mating is done by liking in all cases and has nothing whatever to do with the parents. It must be remembered, of course, that they are subject to the primitive law from which man only has freed himself. They frequently fight for the possession of the female, or measure their powers against each other; and she goes with the victor or the better man.[12] I don't know any case where the advance has been made by the female. Pairing may be for a season or for a period or for life. I don't think there is any rule; but in all cases of separation the children are invariably divided--the males to the father, the females to the mother. After initiation the children owe no allegiance to their parents. Love with them is a wild and wonderful rapture in all its manifestations, and without regard necessarily to sex. I never, in my life, saw a more beautiful expression of it than in the two females whom I saw greet and embrace on Parliament Hill. Their motions to each other, their looks and their clinging were beyond expression tender and swift. Nor shall I ever forget the pair of Oreads in the snow, of whose meeting I have said as much as is possible in a previous chapter. It must be remembered that I am dealing with an order of Nature which knows nothing of our shames and qualms, which is not only unconscious of itself but unconscious of anything but its immediate desire; but I am dealing with it to the understanding of a very different order, to whom it is not enough to do a thing which seems good in its own eyes, but requisite also to be sure of the approbation of its fellow-men. I should create a wrong impression were I to enlarge upon this branch of my subject; I should make my readers call fairies shameful when as a fact they know not the