Why do the fairies shake so convulsively when they soar through the air over the stage? Are stage-fairies all over the world such unequal highflyers? Who made gaiter-boots for Juno and her attendant goddesses, in the many classical plays I have witnessed? Did the Egyptians and Persians know how to make cotton-cloth a yard wide--I have measured their costumes too often behind the footlights not to know the exact measurement. Why do people always cough in the theatre after a severe storm of thunder and lightning, and hold their handkerchiefs to their noses at such times? Why does the moon, in every opera wherein she condescends to show herself, stand still for half an hour immediately over a chimney? What is the necessity of a man dying for love, and singing himself to death like a swan, when he has strength enough of body and mind to pick up three or four pounds of _bouquets_? And why does he give them up to the spasmodic lady in white muslin, whom he has been abusing for half an hour, and declaring, in most emphatic terms, that they part from that time forward for ever? What wonderful hair-invigorator do some actors use in order to grow themselves a fine pair of bushy whiskers in fifteen minutes? How is it possible for a noble lord to have travelled over thousands of miles, to have encountered unheard-of perils, in order to return and marry the miller's maid, and yet to preserve, through years of absence, the same trousers, vest, coat, and hat, in which he first won her affections? Mentioning hats, why does the rich landholder, in modern comedy, sometimes go without a hat, when all his servants talk to him with _their_ hats upon their heads? Is there any forcible, necessary, or (to put it stronger) _absolute_, connection between a queen in distress and large quantities of pearls strung about the hair? These are but a twentieth part of the inquiries which crowd into my questioning-box. I know they are disjointed,--as I soon shall be. But I will see what can be done for me, as things here stand, before I venture to again pile "whys" upon "wherefores." FRAGMENTS: FROM "THE STORY OF A SOUL," AN UNPUBLISHED POEM, WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE BY H. W. PARKER. A TOUR DE FORCE.