upon other excursions of business or
pleasure, and with which she performed her wonders. When she was young,
and had been first taught the art of conjuring by the necromancer, her
father, she was always practicing her skill, whizzing about from one
kingdom to another upon her black stick, and conferring her fairy favors
upon this Prince or that. She had scores of royal godchildren; turned
numberless wicked people into beasts, birds, millstones, clocks, pumps,
boot jacks, umbrellas, or other absurd shapes; and, in a word, was one
of the most active and officious of the whole college of fairies.

But after two or three thousand years of this sport, I suppose
Blackstick grew tired of it. Or perhaps she thought, "What good am I
doing by sending this Princess to sleep for a hundred years? by fixing a
black pudding on to that booby's nose? by causing diamonds and pearls to
drop from one little girl's mouth, and vipers and toads from another's?
I begin to think I do as much harm as good by my performances. I might
as well shut my incantations up, and allow things to take their natural
course.

"There were my two young goddaughters, King Savio's wife, and Duke
Padella's wife: I gave them each a present, which was to render them
charming in the eyes of their husbands, and secure the affection of
those gentlemen as long as they lived. What good did my Rose and my Ring
do these two women? None on earth. From having all their whims indulged
by their husbands, they became capricious, lazy, ill-humored, absurdly
vain, and leered and languished, and fancied themselves irresistibly
beautiful, when they were really quite old and hideous, the ridiculous
creatures! They used actually to patronise me when I went to pay them
a visit--ME, the Fairy Blackstick, who knows all the wisdom of the
necromancers, and could have turned them into baboons, and all their
diamonds into strings of onions, by a single wave of my rod!" So
she locked up her books in her cupboard, declined further magical
performances, and scarcely used her wand at all except as a cane to walk
about with.

So when Duke Padella's lady had a little son (the Duke was at that
time only one of the principal noblemen in Crim Tartary), Blackstick,
although invited to the christening, would not so much as attend; but
merely sent her compliments and a silver papboat for the baby, which was
really not worth a couple of guineas. About the same time the Queen
of Paflagonia presented