pressing this to her cheek as
if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight.
When you wake in the morning, the naughtinesses and evil passions with
which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom
of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your
prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.

I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person's mind.
Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can
become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a
child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the
time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a
card, and these are probably roads in the island; for the Neverland is
always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here
and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and
savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves
through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a
hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose.
It would be an easy map if that were all; but there is also first day at
school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needlework, murders,
hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting
into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth
yourself, and so on; and either these are part of the island or they are
another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially
as nothing will stand still.

Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance, had a
lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while
Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it.
John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a
wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no
friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by
its parents; but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance,
and if they stood still in a row you could say of them that they have
each other's nose, and so forth. On these magic shores children at play
are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can
still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.

Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most
compact; not large and sprawly, yo