It used to be that only fairies could fly in the air, like birds, or go far down beneath the waves and stay there, or travel under water, or move about near the bottom, like fishes.
In old times, it was only the elves, or gnomes, or kabouters, or it might be, dragons, that could find out and possess all the treasures that were inside the earth.
Only the fairies of long ago could rush along like the wind, anywhere, or carry messages as fast as lightning, but now men were doing these very things, for they could cross continents and oceans.
“We’ll hear of their landing in the moon, next,” said one vixen of a fairy, who did not like men.
“By and bye, we fairies won’t have anything to do,” said another. [[32]]
“If men keep on in this way,” remarked a third, “the children will not believe in us any more. Then we shall be banished entirely from the nursery and the picture books, and our friends, the artists and story-tellers, will lose their jobs.”
“It is just too horrible to think of,” said one of the oldest of the fairies, “but what are we going to do about it? Why, think of it, only last week they crossed the Atlantic, by speeding through the air. Before this, they made a voyage over the same mighty water by going down below the surface.”
“True, but I know the reason of all this,” said a wise, motherly looking fairy.
“Do tell us the reason and all about it,” cried out several young fairies in one breath.
“Well, I do not wonder at what they have been able to do; for long ago, they caught some of our smartest fairies, harnessed them and made beasts of burden of them, to do their work.”