. So they sat on ant-hills all day long, and played on the
Jews' harp; and, if the ants bit them, why they just got up and went to
the next ant-hill, till they were bitten there likewise.

And they sat under the flapdoodle-trees, and let the flapdoodle drop
into their mouths; and under the vines, and squeezed the grape-juice
down their throats; and, if any little pigs ran about ready roasted,
crying, "Come and eat me," as was their fashion in that country, they
waited till the pigs ran against their mouths, and then took a bite, and
were content, just as so many oysters would have been.

They needed no weapons, for no enemies ever came near their land; and no
tools, for everything was readymade to their hand; and the stern old
fairy Necessity never came near them to hunt them up, and make them use
their wits, or die.

And so on, and so on, and so on, till there were never such comfortable,
easy-going, happy-go-lucky people in the world.

"Well, that is a jolly life," said Tom.

"You think so?" said the fairy. "Do you see that great peaked mountain
there behind," said the fairy, "with smoke coming out of its top?"

"Yes."

"And do you see all those ashes, and slag, and cinders lying about?"

"Yes."

"Then turn over the next five hundred years, and you will see what
happens next."

And behold the mountain had blown up like a barrel of gunpowder, and
then boiled over like a kettle; whereby one-third of the Doasyoulikes
were blown into the air, and another third were smothered in ashes; so
that there was only one-third left.

"You see," said the fairy, "what comes of living on a burning mountain."

"Oh, why did you not warn them?" said little Ellie.

"I did warn them all that I could. I let the smoke come out of the
mountain; and wherever there is smoke there is fire. And I laid the
ashes and cinders all about; and wherever there are cinders, cinders may
be again. But they did not like to face facts, my dears, as very few
people do; and so they invented a cock-and-bull story, which, I am sure,
I never told them, that the smoke was the breath of a giant, whom some
gods or other had buried under the mountain; and that the cinders were
what the dwarfs roasted the little pigs whole with; and other nonsense
of that kind. And, when folks are in that humour, I cannot teach them,
save by the good old birch-rod."

And then she turned over the next five hundred years: and there were the
remnant of the Doasyoulikes, d