pen again. I should not invest largely in
pumpkins with an eye to the motor trade. Cinderella got a ball dress
from the fairy; but I do not suppose that she looked after her own
clothes any the less after it.

But the view that fairy tales cannot really have happened, though crazy,
is common. The man I speak of disbelieved in fairy tales in an even more
amazing and perverted sense. He actually thought that fairy tales
ought not to be told to children. That is (like a belief in slavery
or annexation) one of those intellectual errors which lie very near to
ordinary mortal sins. There are some refusals which, though they may be
done what is called conscientiously, yet carry so much of their whole
horror in the very act of them, that a man must in doing them not only
harden but slightly corrupt his heart. One of them was the refusal of
milk to young mothers when their husbands were in the field against us.
Another is the refusal of fairy tales to children.

.....

The man had come to see me in connection with some silly society
of which I am an enthusiastic member; he was a fresh-coloured,
short-sighted young man, like a stray curate who was too helpless even
to find his way to the Church of England. He had a curious green necktie
and a very long neck; I am always meeting idealists with very long
necks. Perhaps it is that their eternal aspiration slowly lifts their
heads nearer and nearer to the stars. Or perhaps it has something to
do with the fact that so many of them are vegetarians: perhaps they are
slowly evolving the neck of the giraffe so that they can eat all the
tops of the trees in Kensington Gardens. These things are in every sense
above me. Such, anyhow, was the young man who did not believe in fairy
tales; and by a curious coincidence he entered the room when I had just
finished looking through a pile of contemporary fiction, and had begun
to read "Grimm's Fairy tales" as a natural consequence.

The modern novels stood before me, however, in a stack; and you can
imagine their titles for yourself. There was "Suburban Sue: A Tale of
Psychology," and also "Psychological Sue: A Tale of Suburbia"; there was
"Trixy: A Temperament," and "Man-Hate: A Monochrome," and all those nice
things. I read them with real interest, but, curiously enough, I grew
tired of them at last, and when I saw "Grimm's Fairy Tales" lying
accidentally on the table, I gave a cry of indecent joy. Here at least,
here at last, one could find