“Even if the prudes tried to abolish the fairies by law, and shut out all the fireplaces, and did [[178]]away with sleighs, for automobiles, and had aeroplanes, in place of wagons, even then a new lot of fairies and heroes would come in and take the place of the banished old friends of the children. They would sit in the chairs, peep in at the windows, live in the nursery, and refuse to be driven out. In Switzerland, they would hide in the milk churns, or behind rocks, or in the ice caverns. In a word, never having been born they could not die.”
A wise old gnome spoke for his companions, as follows:
“It is only those creatures that have bodies and have to be born and must eat and drink food every day, that get old, and have to be buried. Besides, every fairy knows that, while thousands of tourists come, year after year, in their bodies, as in sleeping cars and day coaches, very few ever really get into that Switzerland, which, after two thousand years, has grown up in the Swiss heart. These foreigners come and go, and eat and sleep, and drink, but what did they know of the Swiss soul?”
One ancient fairy that looked as if he might be several millions of years old, who had a name too long to be pronounced, but which means, when translated, “I told you so,” summed up in his speech what he had seen come to pass, since [[179]]mortals arrived on the earth. He had looked upon the lake dwellers, the Romans, the barbarians, the visitors of all sorts and times, and finally the hotels and tourists.
“There have been many changes of fashions since I paid any attention to mortals,” said he. Then he made them all laugh, by continuing: “Once, nobody cared for the mountains. Now, all human folks are writing poetry about them, or climbing them, or punching their faces with alpenstocks. Once no one loved the flowers of the Alps. Now, foolish mortals, in both trousers and petticoats, come with their long purses, but they are too lazy to climb up to the real ‘Alps,’ and pick the blossoms where they grow. So they buy them, already and artificially made, in the market. They go shopping for canton flannel Edelweiss, as they would for soap, or tooth brushes. They stick these woolen things in their hatbands, and they have their alpenstocks branded with the names of places, whether they have been there or not. Or, they make belt bouquets of the Alpine roses, or glacier violets, and then strut about as if they were explorers. What fools these mortals be.”
At this, all the fairies of every sort and kind, laughed and guffawed so uproariously, that the meeting adjourned in disorder. [[180]]
Yet they all went away happy, for they felt sure that whatever foolish mortals should do, Switzerland would still be the fairies’ playground. [[181]]