Before the revels were concluded, the King ordered a quiet little wind to run among the guests, and bid them all come close to him and to his daughter. Then he spoke to them as follows:—
“Worthy friends! there are among you many suitors to my daughter Cirrha, who is pledged this evening to choose a husband. She bids me tell you that she loves you all; but since it is desirable that this our royal house be strengthened by a fit alliance with some foreign power, she has resolved to take as husband one of those guests who have come hither from the principality of Nimbus.” Now, Nimbus is that country, not seldom visible from some parts of our earth, which we have called the Rain-Cloud. “The subjects of the Prince of Nimbus,” Cumulus continued, “are a dark race, it is true, but they are famed for their beneficence.”
Two winds, at this point, raised between themselves a great disturbance, so that there arose a universal cry that somebody should turn them out. With much trouble they were driven out from the assembly; thereupon, quite mad with jealousy and disappointment, they went howling off to sea, where they played pool-billiards with a fleet of ships, and so forgot their sorrow.
King Cumulus resumed his speech, and said that he was addressing himself, now, especially to those of his good friends who came from Nimbus. “To-night, let them retire to rest, and early the next morning let each of them go down to Earth; whichever of them should be found on their return to have been engaged below in the most useful service to the race of man, that son of Nimbus should be Cirrha’s husband.”
Cumulus, having said this, put a white nightcap on his head, which was the signal for a general retirement. The golden ground of his dominions was covered for the night, as well as the crimson trees, with cotton. So the whole kingdom was put properly to bed. Late in the night the moon got up, and threw over King Cumulus a silver counterpane.
II.
THE ADVENTURES OF NEBULUS AND NUBIS.
The suitors of the Princess Cirrha, who returned to Nimbus, were a-foot quite early the next morning, and petitioned their good-natured Prince to waft them over London. They had agreed among themselves, that by descending there, where men were densely congregated, they should have a greater chance of doing service to the human race. Therefore the Rain-Cloud floated over the great City of the World, and, as it passed at sundry points, the suitors came down upon rain-drops to perform their destined labor. Where each might happen to alight depended almost wholly upon accident; so that their adventures were but little better than a lottery for Cirrha’s hand. One, who had been the most magniloquent among them all, fell with his pride upon the patched umbrella of an early breakfast woman, and from thence was shaken off into a puddle. He was splashed up presently, mingled with soil, upon the corduroys of a laborer, who stopped for breakfast on his way to work. From thence, evaporating, he returned crest-fallen to the Land of Clouds.
Among the suitors there were two kind-hearted fairies, Nebulus and Nubis, closely bound by friendship to each other. While they were in conversation, Nebulus, who suddenly observed that they were passing over some unhappy region, dropped, with a hope that he might bless it. Nubis passed on, and presently alighted on the surface of the Thames.
The district which had wounded the kind heart of Nebulus was in a part of Bermondsey, called Jacob’s Island. The fairy fell into a ditch; out of this, however, he was taken by a woman, who carried him to her own home, among other ditch-water, within a pail. Nebulus abandoned himself to complete despair, for what claim could he now establish on the hand of Cirrha? The miserable plight of the poor fairy we may gather from a description given by a son of man of the sad place to which he had descended. “In this Island may be seen, at any time of the day, women dipping water, with pails attached by ropes to the backs of the houses, from a foul fetid ditch, its banks coated with a compound of mud and filth, and strewed with offal and carrion; the water to be used for every purpose, culinary ones not excepted; although close to the place whence it is drawn, filth and refuse of various kinds are plentifully showered into it from the outhouses of the wooden houses overhanging its current, or rather slow and sluggish stream; their posts or supporters rotten, decayed, and in many instances broken, and the filth dropping into the water, to be seen by any passer by. During the summer, crowds of boys bathe in the putrid ditches, where they must come in contact with abominations highly injurious.”[1]