Dr. Montessori protests against the idea that fairy-tales have anything to do with the religious sense, saying that "faith and fable are as the poles apart.

" She does not understand that it is for their truth that we value fairy-tales.

The object in view, in submitting these modern fairy-tales to the British public, is to lay bare the pillars of truth which support the Fatherland.

A mother who never scolded, who told no tales, who petted black sheep when they were bruised and torn or stained entirely through their own wickedness, who could always be depended on for kisses and bonbons and fairy-tales, seemed more angelic than human to poor little Sarah; whose own mother was wrapt up in her two irreproachable sons, and had small affection to spare for an ugly, tiresome little girl.

It is as if Mother Nature had given them the marvellous "cloak of invisibility," of which we read in fairy-tales.

Aye, even to the memories which were the possession of that far future youth, who was indeed I, of his childhood's days, when his nurse of that Age swung him, and crooned impossible lullabies of this mythical sun which, according to those future fairy-tales, had once passed across the blackness that now lay above the Pyramid.

And much that was writ in the book was common knowledge, and set mostly to the count of fairy-tales and suchlike, even as we of this our age take not over-surely any belief in Myths of olden times.

For Thursday night was not alone starred with stories; every night there was one to tell; sometimes an incident of his day in town, which he would dress up with the imaginative instinct of a born teller of fairy-tales.

Since the time of fairy-tales Love has had a way of coming in the disguise of Duty.

XV THE COCONUT TREE Among the classic fairy-tales which passed like shooting stars across those dark hours of our boyhood in which we wrestled with the grim rudiments of Latin and Greek, and which abide in the memory after nearly all that they helped to brighten has passed away, there was one which related to a contest between Neptune and Minerva as to which should confer the greatest benefit on the human race.

The bulk of their finest fairy-tales were brought by Buddhist monks, in the course of the first millennium A.D., from India by way of Central Asia.

Thus we have the strange experience of finding some of our own finest fairy-tales in almost the same form in South China.

" Nurse Hripsime turned her gaze to the vacant yard, and, shaking her head, said: "My dear son, the history of that house is as long as one of our fairy-tales.

"You can keep your fairy-tales for them that like 'em.

I had the usual child's love for fairy-tales and marvels, and his power of telling stories naturally fascinated me.

The fairy-tales are at root not only moral in the sense of being innocent, but moral in the sense of being didactic, moral in the sense of being moralising.

I think the poets have made a mistake: because the world of the fairy-tales is a brighter and more varied world than ours, they have fancied it less moral; really it is brighter and more varied because it is more moral.

If you really read the fairy-tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the otherthe idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition.

This is the profound morality of fairy-tales; which, so far from being lawless, go to the root of all law.

We wandered about, and it used to seem to me, I remember, like the scenes in which some of Grimm's fairy-tales were enacted I suppose that the honey-woman was the wife of a woodman and was a simple soul enough; but there was something behind it all; she knew more than she would say.

[roughly], I don't believe in no fairy-tales!

I shall soon be carrying him on my arm, telling him fairy-tales, giving him serious instruction and lessons as to how a young man has to conduct himself in the world.

The goose would tell fairy-tales, and in the midst of them the brook would tinkle a ballad; a great heavy stone would caper about ludicrously; the rose stealing up affectionately behind him would creep through his locks, and the ivy stroke his careworn forehead.

Now then, by God, that beats the fairy-tales!

His wife, besides collaborating with him in such works as "Stories of English Life," "Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain," wrote poems, tales, &c., and was the first to translate the fairy-tales of Hans Andersen.