ard think that this light fanciful offer of
a "fairy" to "the King of the Fairies" would, in the nineteenth century,
not only be substantially realised, but surpassed as follows:--

The electric telegraph would convey intelligence more than twenty-eight
thousand times round the earth, while Puck, at his vaunted speed, was
crawling round it only ONCE!

On every instrument there is a dial, on which are inscribed the names of
the six or eight stations with which it usually communicates. When much
business is to be transacted, a boy is necessary for each of these
instruments; generally, however, one lad can, without practical
difficulty, manage about three; but, as the whole of them are ready for
work by night as well as by day, they are incessantly attended, in
watches of eight hours each, by these satellite boys by day and by men
at night.

As fast as the various messages for delivery, flying one after another
from the ground-floor up the chimney, reach the level of the
instruments, they are brought by the superintendent to the particular
one by which they are to be communicated; and its boy, with the
quickness characteristic of his age, then instantly sets to work.

His first process is by means of the electric current to sound a little
bell, which simultaneously alarms all the stations on his line; and
although the attention of the sentinel at each is thus attracted, yet it
almost instantly evaporates from all excepting from that to the name of
which he causes the electric needle to point, by which signal the clerk
at that station instantly knows that the forthcoming question is
addressed to _him_; and accordingly, by a corresponding signal, he
announces to the London boy that he is ready to receive it. By means of
a brass handle fixed to the dial, which the boy grasps in each hand, he
now begins rapidly to spell off his information by certain twists of his
wrists, each of which imparts to the needles on his dial, as well as to
those on the dial of his distant correspondent, a convulsive movement
designating the particular letter of the telegraphic alphabet required.
By this arrangement he is enabled to transmit an ordinary-sized word in
three seconds, or about twenty per minute. In the case of any accident
to the wire of one of his needles, he can, by a different alphabet,
transmit his message by a series of movements of the single needle, at
the reduced rate of about eight or nine words per minute.

While a boy a