e firmly impressed on my mind. Education
and life provided for my familiarity with reality in all its harshness
and angles, its strains and hurts; but who in later years could have
flung wide the gates of the kingdom where everything is beautiful and
good, and where ugliness is as surely doomed to destruction as evil to
punishment? Even poesy in our times turns from the Castalian fount whose
crystal-clear water becomes an unclean pool and, though reluctantly,
obeys the impulse to make its abode in the dust of reality. Therefore I
plead with voice and pen in behalf of fairy tales; therefore I tell them
to my children and grandchildren, and have even written a volume of them
myself.

How perverse and unjust it is to banish the fairy tale from the life of
the child, because devotion to its charm might prove detrimental to the
grown person! Has not the former the same claim to consideration as the
latter?

Every child is entitled to expect a different treatment and judgment, and
to receive what is his due undiminished. Therefore it is unjust to injure
and rob the child for the benefit of the man. Are we even sure that the
boy is destined to attain the second and third stages--youth and manhood?

True, there are some apostles of caution who deny themselves every joy of
existence while in their prime, in order, when their locks are grey, to
possess wealth which frequently benefits only their heirs.

All sensible mothers will doubtless, like ours, take care that their
children do not believe the stories which they tell them to be true. I do
not remember any time when, if my mind had been called upon to decide, I
should have thought that anything I invented myself had really happened;
but I know that we were often unable to distinguish whether the plausible
tale related by some one else belonged to the realm of fact or fiction.
On such occasions we appealed to my mother, and her answer instantly set
all doubts at rest; for we thought she could never be mistaken, and knew
that she always told the truth.

As to the stories invented by myself, I fared like other imaginative
children. I could imagine the most marvellous things about every member
of the household, and while telling them--but only during that time--I
often fancied that they were true; yet the moment I was asked whether
these things had actually occurred, it seemed as if I woke from a dream.
I at once separated what I had imagined from what I had actually
experie