Page:The New-Year's Bargain (1884).djvu/121

 Alas! what a poor return have we met for all this! For a new age has dawned, and another kind of child,—a child who reasons and thinks, and studies arithmetic and the science of objects. We have lost our worshippers. Even the babies sprawling in their mothers' laps know better than to believe in us. Long we strove,—we practised all our lore, traced our rings in the grass, dropped fairy favors into little stockings, made bluebottle-fly and dragonfly our messengers,—but all in vain. The wish to see was wanting.

Did we spin for hours, and overlay the grass with a silken carpet to dazzle and enchant early peepers? Nobody cared a button; and some parent would be heard explaining, "It is nothing but cobweb, my dear. Come to the library after breakfast, and I'll read you about it in a book of Natural History." 'Yes,' said the fairy, bitterly, 'it had come to that,—the book of Natural History instead of the "Fairy