he big front hall, giving access to the
bedrooms. At the opposite end of the hall, in the gallery, burnt a
gaslight: to my horror I observed close to the gas what seemed to me a
colossal shrouded statue, made of a black bronze, formless, silent,
awful. I crept back to my bed, and there shivered in an ecstasy of
fear, till at last I fell asleep. There was no statue there in the
morning! I told my old nurse, after a day or two of dumb dread, what I
had seen. She laughed, and told me that a certain Mrs. Holder, an
elderly widow who was a dressmaker, had been to see her, about some
piece of work. They had turned out the nursery lights and were going
downstairs, when some question arose about the stuff of the frock,
whatever it was. Mrs. Holder had mounted on a chair to look close at
the stuff by the gaslight; and this was my bogey!

We had a delightful custom in nursery days, devised by my mother, that
on festival occasions, such as birthdays or at Christmas, our presents
were given us in the evening by a fairy called Abracadabra.

The first time the fairy appeared, we heard, after tea, in the hall,
the hoarse notes of a horn. We rushed out in amazement. Down in the
hall, talking to an aunt of mine who was staying in the house, stood a
veritable fairy, in a scarlet dress, carrying a wand and a scarlet bag,
and wearing a high pointed scarlet hat, of the shape of an
extinguisher. My aunt called us down; and we saw that the fairy had the
face of a great ape, dark-brown, spectacled, of a good-natured aspect,
with a broad grin, and a curious crop of white hair, hanging down
behind and on each side. Unfortunately my eldest brother, a very clever
and imaginative child, was seized with a panic so insupportable at the
sight of the face, that his present had to be given him hurriedly, and
he was led away, blanched and shuddering, to the nursery. After that,
the fairy never appeared except when he was at school: but long after,
when I was looking in a lumber-room with my brother for some mislaid
toys, I found in a box the mask of Abracadabra and the horn. I put it
hurriedly on, and blew a blast on the horn, which seemed to be of
tortoise-shell with metal fittings. To my amazement, he turned
perfectly white, covered his face with his hands, and burst out with
the most dreadful moans. I thought at first that he was making believe
to be frightened, but I saw in a minute or two that he had quite lost
control of himself, and the things we