"I wish I could oblige you, but fun is not my strong point. I went from Greenland to the South Seas one day in search of a laugh, but I failed to find it; indeed I came near doing worse, for in getting into the hoop of a native's nose-ring for a swing--just by way of a new sensation--I forgot to make myself invisible, and he caught me, thought I was a spider, and would have crushed me, had not a baby put out its little hands in glee to play with me. I can assure you I was for a time averse to trying new sensations." "How did you get out of your scrape?" "I travelled down that baby's back in a hurry, and hid in an ant-hill; he poked about with his little black fingers for a quarter of an hour, but he did not find me. Ah, those were the days of my youth!" "Do you ever have anything to do with witches?" "Mark my words, ghosts and witches live only in the imagination of silly human beings. We useful people scorn them. Now imps might be said to belong to the same family were it not for the proofs we have of their existence. They are everlastingly getting children into trouble by suggesting things to them they never would have thought of--" "Such as what?" "Do you suppose I am going to tell you? No, indeed; they can do it fast enough for themselves. Persons who take too much wine are their most constant companions; they pounce upon them and twitch and tease and torment them until the poor wine-bibber trembles from head to foot. They won't let him sleep or eat or think, and fairly drive him crazy. Oh, imps are really to be dreaded! But I must now begin my second story." PAZ'S SECOND STORY "There was to be a grand birthday festival among the Fays, who inhabit the tropics. The wind fairies had brought us news of it as well as urgent invitations for our royal family to be present; but so deeply engrossed was our King at that moment in supplying the oil wells of Pennsylvania with petroleum that he could not absent himself. The Queen never goes from home without her liege lord. "The princes and princesses were all too young, and could not be allowed to leave their lessons; so the regrets were inscribed on lotus leaves, and sent by special messenger--a bird of the Cypselina family. He was a great sooty-black fellow, with a tinge of green in his feathers, strong, well able to fly, as his family generally do from America to Asia. But the gift could not be intrusted to him. I was chosen as bearer of that.