eadful wood.

"And did they catch Nuth?" you ask me, gentle reader.

"Oh, no, my child" (for such a question is childish). "Nobody ever
catches Nuth."

HOW ONE CAME, AS WAS FORETOLD, TO THE CITY OF NEVER

The child that played about the terraces and gardens in sight of the
Surrey hills never knew that it was he that should come to the
Ultimate City, never knew that he should see the Under Pits, the
barbicans and the holy minarets of the mightiest city known. I think
of him now as a child with a little red watering-can going about the
gardens on a summer's day that lit the warm south country, his
imagination delighted with all tales of quite little adventures, and
all the while there was reserved for him that feat at which men
wonder.

Looking in other directions, away from the Surrey hills, through all
his infancy he saw that precipice that, wall above wall and mountain
above mountain, stands at the edge of the World, and in perpetual
twilight alone with the Moon and the Sun holds up the inconceivable
City of Never. To tread its streets he was destined; prophecy knew it.
He had the magic halter, and a worn old rope it was; an old wayfaring
woman had given it to him: it had the power to hold any animal whose
race had never known captivity, such as the unicorn, the hippogriff
Pegasus, dragons and wyverns; but with a lion, giraffe, camel or
horse it was useless.

How often we have seen that City of Never, that marvel of the Nations!
Not when it is night in the World, and we can see no further than the
stars; not when the sun is shining where we dwell, dazzling our eyes;
but when the sun has set on some stormy days, all at once repentant at
evening, and those glittering cliffs reveal themselves which we almost
take to be clouds, and it is twilight with us as it is for ever with
them, then on their gleaming summits we see those golden domes that
overpeer the edges of the World and seem to dance with dignity and
calm in that gentle light of evening that is Wonder's native haunt.
Then does the City of Never, unvisited and afar, look long at her
sister the World.

It had been prophecied that he should come there. They knew it when
the pebbles were being made and before the isles of coral were given
unto the sea. And thus the prophecy came unto fulfilment and passed
into history, and so at length to Oblivion, out of which I drag it as
it goes floating by, into which I shall one day tumble. The
hippogriffs dance b