in quest of a
town whose houses and temples are of pure gold. What archaeologist has
not at some time given ear to the whispers that tell of long-lost
treasures, of forgotten cities, of Atlantis swallowed by the sea? It is*
not only children who love the tales of Fairyland. How happily we have
read Kipling's 'Puck of Pook's Hill,' De la Motte Fouque's 'Undine,'
Kenneth Grahame's 'Wind in the Willows,' or F.W. Bain's Indian stories.
The recent fairy plays--Barry's "Peter Pan," Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird,"
and the like--have been enormously successful. Say what we will, fairy
tales still hold their old power over us, and still we turn to them as a
relief from the commonplace.

*Transcriber's note: In the original text the word "is" is omitted.

Some of us, failing to find Fairyland upon earth, have transferred it
to the kingdom of Death; and it has become the hope for the future. Each
Sunday in church the congregation of business men and hard-worked women
set aside the things of their monotonous life, and sing the songs of the
endless search. To the rolling notes of the organ they tell the tale of
the Elysian Fields: they take their unfilled desire for Fairyland and
adjust it to their deathless hope of Heaven. They sing of crystal
fountains, of streets paved with gold, of meadows dressed with living
green where they shall dwell as children who now as exiles mourn. There
everlasting spring abides and never-withering flowers; there ten
thousand times ten thousand clad in sparkling raiment throng up the
steeps of light. Here in the church the most unimaginative people cry
aloud upon their God for Fairyland.

"The roseate hues of early dawn,
The brightness of the day,
The crimson of the sunset sky,
How fast they fade away!
Oh, for the pearly gates of Heaven,
Oh, for the golden floor...."

They know no way of picturing the incomprehensible state of the future,
and they interpret it, therefore, in terms of the fairy tale.

I am inclined to think that this sovereignty of the fairies is
beneficial. Fairy tales fill the minds of the young with knowledge of
the kindly people who will reward with many gifts those that are
charitable to the old; they teach a code of chivalry that brings as its
reward the love of the beautiful princess in the tower; they tell of
dangers overcome by courage and perseverance; they sug