"There is only one of the ladies, however, I am informed, who interests herself in the construction of these most ingenious toys. Possessed of ample means, and more than ample leisure, she amuses herself in hours which might otherwise be devoted to gossip and tea, in putting together these various models of buildings, all differing in style, and of most singular materials. The church, for instance, is built of fragments of clinker, gathered from stove and grate, and held firmly together by cement. Nothing could have reproduced so exactly the rough reddish stone of which the old Sleepy Hollow Church is built. The window-glass is represented by carefully framed pieces of tin foil; the gray stone of the gate-posts is imitated by sand rubbed on wooden pillars with a coating of cement. The streets are paved in much the same clever fashion. The well, the pond, the stream, are filled with water each day by the chatelaine's own careful hands. Many of the mimic creatures, human and otherwise, are automata, manufactured to order; the others are wooden or china figures selected with extreme care as to their fitness for their purpose. So rare and so exceedingly pretty are some of these little figures, that they have become objects of unlawful desire to certain soulless curiosity-mongers, who have rewarded an open and confiding hospitality with base attempts at spoliation; and now a person is employed to live in the cottage just beyond us, and do little else than take care of these unique possessions.
"No, you need not start. The woman is probably there at her post, and surveying our operations from time to time. But we have behaved like decent people. We are taking away nothing but a remembrance of a singularly interesting hour, and an admiring impression of the originality, the ingenuity, the industry, and the independence of one of our own sex.
"Is it not so, my friend? And now, by the length of those cedar shadows, it is time for us to rise up and be gone. Else the moonlight will have met and parted with the sunset ere we reach home."
There was nothing to be said; the tale had been told, and with one last, lingering glance, one parting smile, half amused, half touched, I rose, and together we walked home in somewhat pensive mood. Was it not our last day in Fairyland?—Kate J. Hill.
[WINE AND KISSES.]
Translated from the Persian of Mirtsa Schaffy.
The lover may be shy—
His bashfulness goes by
When first he kisses.