The next thing I found was a piece of chalk; and I
saw in it all the art and all the frescoes of the
world. The next was a coin of a very modest value;
and I saw in it not only the image and superscription
of our own Caesar, but all government and order since
the world began. But I have not space to say
what were the items in the long and splendid procession
of poetical symbols that came pouring out. I
cannot tell you all the things that were in my pocket.
I can tell you one thing, however, that I could not
find in my pocket. I allude to my railway ticket.
The Dragon’s Grandmother
I met a man the other day who did not believe in fairy
tales. I do not mean that he did not believe
in the incidents narrated in them—that
he did not believe that a pumpkin could turn into
a coach. He did, indeed, entertain this curious
disbelief. And, like all the other people I have
ever met who entertained it, he was wholly unable
to give me an intelligent reason for it. He tried
the laws of nature, but he soon dropped that.
Then he said that pumpkins were unalterable in ordinary
experience, and that we all reckoned on their infinitely
protracted pumpkinity. But I pointed out to him
that this was not an attitude we adopt specially towards
impossible marvels, but simply the attitude we adopt
towards all unusual occurrences. If we were certain
of miracles we should not count on them. Things
that happen very seldom we all leave out of our calculations,
whether they are miraculous or not. I do not
expect a glass of water to be turned into wine; but
neither do I expect a glass of water to be poisoned
with prussic acid. I do not in ordinary business
relations act on the assumption that the editor is
a fairy; but neither do I act on the assumption that
he is a Russian spy, or the lost heir of the Holy
Roman Empire. What we assume in action is not
that the natural order is unalterable, but simply that
it is much safer to bet on uncommon incidents than
on common ones. This does not touch the credibility
of any attested tale about a Russian spy or a pumpkin
turned into a coach. If I had seen a pumpkin
turned into a Panhard motor-car with my own eyes that
would not make me any more inclined to assume that
the same thing would happen 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.
