Children -- Fiction; Elves -- Fiction; Kentucky -- Fiction; Magic -- Fiction; Pride and vanity -- Fiction
As the song closed, Sprigg felt something placed in his hand, which,
becoming visible the moment it came in contact with him, proved to be a
coronal of bright green plumes, such as we have seen described in the
interview between Jervis Whitney and Nick of the Woods. It was then
remarked that his headpiece possessed the magic property of rendering
the person who wore it--fairy or human--invisible to mortal eyes. Nor
was this all; It had also the power of making the sights and sounds of
Fairyland as clearly perceptible to the senses of the mortal who should
chance to get it as to the fairies themselves, whether the wee folks
were willing or not, he should pry into their mysteries.
This fantastic ornament, the only object visible to him in the red
mist--his own hand that held it up to his admiring gaze not
excepted--Sprigg thought even more beautiful and desirable than ever
were the red moccasins. He was wishing it was his, and debating within
himself whether he should venture to put it upon his head, when a voice,
which he recognized to be the same he had heard at home and in the woods
and on the hill, and now knew to be that of Manitou-Echo, said:
"Am I not a beautiful thing for the head, Sprigg? Yes, beautiful! You
can't deny it; nobody can! Put me on your head! What's to hinder? Put me
on, and you shall see what we do with wild dreams and wild dreamers,
here in Manitou-land."
In a twinkling the vain boy had doffed the coonskin cap and donned the
feathers. The magic coronal was hardly adjusted to his head, when
suddenly the luminous red mist condensed itself high aloft into a globe
of living light, leaving all surrounding objects clearly revealed to
sight, as were the crystalline sheen of a June day resting upon them.
What Sprigg saw there was, indeed, a cave; but far more the appearance
had it of a magnificent temple, so vast and lofty it was; so mazy with
multitudinous columns and arches, and so resplendent with the light of
that living lamp, which found reflection in a million star-like points,
as if wall, floor, ceiling, column and arch were studded with gems of
every rich and brilliant hue. The hubbub which he had heard around him,
the individual sounds whereof were now more distinct to his ear, Sprigg
found to proceed from an innumerable multitude of diminutive people,
sweeping by him in a continuous stream, and in the same direction, as if
a common impulse or purpose swayed them all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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