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THE CHIMNEY-ELF.
13
"Yes. my dear. But that's a very bad way you
have of echoing a person's words ; very rude, indeed ;
and Fve told yon so before."
" I know it, but how do they live there " !
" How ! How do you live in Yankee-land!*'
*
Why, I just live here/*
"And they just live there; and when the moon
shines they come sliding down the beams, and get into
people's heads, and they write them down and call them
their own. and that's the way fairy stories, and poetry,
and all that, comes into the world."
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Oh, but, Chimney-IK if I
should go to the moon,
could I see all these beautiful stories going on, just as
people do all round here!"
-Yes."
"What! see Cinderella, and little Eed Eiding-
Hood, ar.d Beauty and the Beast, and Jack the Giant-
Killer, and all the rest of them !"
"Yes, yes. yes!"
-And Robinson
and Jack and the Beanstalk, and **
Crusoe, and the Arabian Nights,
'-Every thing and every body, I tell you ! Every
story that ever was written is true somewhere or somehow
;
men and women are not bright enough to make
anything up ; all they can do is to tell over what they
have seen and heard. Well, some things are true of the
world just about you, and those you
call real :
and some
other things you don't see are just as true, and those yon