I know your buried qualities well, and had some brave person cut off your head--_i.e._ your Self-Esteem (as I previously suggested)--years ago, we might have had a Prince, nay, even a King, among us. Yet on the whole I think you are happy in your condition. The _dolce far niente_ suits you very well, and the bovine repose of an almost Buddhistic meditation entirely agrees with your constitution, while as long as life lasts you may be sure you shall never lack Pins. Pass, good Elephant! I salute you profoundly, and with a still more profound reverence I kiss the hands of the Fairy! XI. THE STORY OF A SOUTH AFRICAN DREAM. Elephants and Fairies suggest the "Arabian Nights." The "Arabian Nights" suggest, in their turn, the East, and the East suggests--ah! what does the East not suggest? A. P. Sinnett with his eyeglass? a vision of "Koot-Hoomi?" pretty Mrs. Besant, once atheist, now theosophist? or the marvellous fat (now dematerialised) of the marvellous Blavatsky? More, far more than these things! The very idea of the East causes me to stand still where I am, in a corner among all the literary folk, and "dream." The mood grows upon me; I am in the humour for "dreams." I feel metaphysical; don't listen to me; the fit will pass by and by. Nay, it _is_ passing, and I feel pious instead--very pious; and I shall probably get blasphemous directly. From piety to blasphemy is but a step; from the prayer of Moses to his professing to see the Deity's "back parts" was but the hair's-breadth of a line in Holy Writ. And as I find everything in a very bad state, and as I think everybody wants reforming, I am going to tell a little story. It is a beautiful little story, and if you ask the _Athenæum_ about it, it will tell you that it is "like a picture by Watts"; that "it has had no forerunners in literature and probably will have no successors." So you must pay great attention to it, and you must think it over for a long time. It requires thinking over for a long time, because it is a Parable. The best people, and especially those who want to "tickle the ears" of the _Pall Mall_ groundlings, are all going to talk and live and write in Parables for the future. So listen! "There was once a woman in South Africa. She saw the sunlight lie across her bed. When there is a window and no blind to it, the sunlight has a way of pouring in, And of falling in the direction which is most natural to itself. * * * * * The sunlight did not move, So the woman covered her eyes. And sleep came upon the woman and she dreamed. * * * * *