One of the many women I ever really loved, fair in the fearless old fashion, was used to sing, in the blithe, unfettered accent of the people: “I’d like to be a fairy, And dance upon my toes, I’d like to be a fairy, And wear short close!” And in later life it is to her sex that the wee (but very wise) folk sometimes delegate their power of torment. Such understudies are found to play the part exceeding well; and many a time the infatuated youth believes he sees in the depth of one sole pair of eyes—blue, brown, or green (the fairy colour)—the authentic fairy wicket standing ajar: many a time must he hear the quaint old formula, “I’m sure, if I’ve ever done anything to lead you to think,” etc (runs it not so?), ere he shall realise that here is the gate upon no magic pleasance but on a cheap suburban villa, banging behind the wrathful rate-collector or hurled open to speed the pallid householder to the Registrar’s Office. In still grosser habitations, too, they lurk, do the People of Mischief, ready to frolic out on the unsuspecting one: as in the case, which still haunts my memory, of a certain bottle of an historic Château-Yquem, hued like Venetian glass, odorous as a garden in June. Forth from out the faint perfume of this haunted drink there danced a bevy from Old France, clad in the fashion of Louis-Quinze, peach-coloured knots of ribbon bedizening apple-green velvets, as they moved in stately wise among the roses of the old garden, to the quaint music—Rameau, was it?—of a fairy _cornemuse,_ while fairy Watteaus, Fragonards, Lancrets, sat and painted them. Alas! too shallow the bottle, too brief the brawls: not to be recalled by any quantity of Green Chartreuse. Aboard the Galley